Intro

Back in its day, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was the very first time that players could skate on-line in the series - even on console. Alongside that came 60 FPS gameplay and a new engine powered in part by RenderWare, plus the Revert. It was nice.

The sequel THPS4 then went on to get rid of the traditional 2 minute timer, padding out the gameplay with an increased number of goals you can take at your own pace - plus the Spine-Transfer. It was also the first step into building a semi-immersive skating game that they would ‘flesh out’ later with Tony Hawk’s Underground.

In those days, they’d publish a new title in this series every year.
Now, over 2 decades after the release of the original games comes a remake - following in the footsteps of another.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is the direct sequel to Vicarious Visions their game slash remake Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. The latter only got about a month worth of updates, after which Vicarious was pronounced dead when the studio got merged with the rest of Blizzard. Microsoft then acquired Activision/Blizzard after years of fighting regulators. Five years have passed and what was once-upon-a-time planned as DLC for 1 + 2 turned into a standalone game.

We’ll cut to the point: This is a pretty good remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Largely in thanks to what Vicarious Visions already did. The core gameplay is the same. The bits related to part 4 aren’t remaking much, besides the actual levels themselves.

We paid good cash for a copy of this game to fall into our lap early. Nothing here was sponsored by ANYBODY! We’re writing this because we want to - and by hand no less! So we’ll go over our observations. We won’t find us talking about the soundtrack and other subjective things much.

All the pictures are also taken by us, they’re not always related to what’s being written.

The Innovations

Iron Galaxy took some risks by building original levels to replace some omitted ones. If their new levels don’t work alongside the rest, they will stick out. That said what they delivered is quite good for what it is. They’re definitely better than what they’re replacing (Chicago and Carnival). People will make up their own mind, find exploits or find other positive traits in these, but these are our initial impressions after our first playthrough of the game:

The Water Park level comes close to something you might find in THUG2 or American Wasteland, but there aren’t many easily definable points of interest around the lower sections. It also features a scuffed imitation of Eric Sparrow we refuse to show. There’s a lot of places to go though and lots of potential lines.

The Movie Set level is a an average competition level. It’s got a few issues.

The Pinball Level is a lovely extra with some fun interactive goals to complete.

Also new are the cutscenes which in the case of the levels from part 4 give you some moments from the original campaign. They pause player movement and skate timer when they happen.

We also gain the ability to place goals in Create-A-Park. There’s also more variety in the backgrounds offered, but the park complexity limit is the same as 1+2. Still, very welcome changes and overall great improvements. The parks still have the same fidelity to them as before, but that is fine. There’s still decent looking ones out there, alongside the fun and scuffy ones.

The multiplayer game has a new HAWK mode where your skater drops letter pickups for others to find. It’s cute, and tempting to go back to because it allows you be ‘creative’ in a different way. The new and included voice chat is also good to have.

Photo Mode, is also a thing. It works, does what it should. We’ve been using it for the screenshots alongside this review. More on that feature later.

The UI and presentation looks nice and does a good job capturing the memories of part 3.

The Weaknesses

What (Most Likely) Won’t Be Fixed

Since its unveiling, people have been divided over the omittiance of the career mode that the original part 4 had. Instead, the levels from part 4 play just like part 3. This is a deal breaker if you care about authenticity to the source material of course. We feel conflicted.
It’s hard to not argue that the series peaked at part 3.
But… a lot of goals are also lost, that make up quite a bit of content. A whole goal level like Kona got turned into a competition-only level for consistency with the level layouts of the previous games.
It’s difficult to still call that a remake, but if we’d had a slower version of part 4, with all the skate pros doing their best voicing their lines for the goals - would the non-fans rejoice over this change? When THPS 1+2 was doing so well as was being hailed as the definitive Tony game, would you really want to risk changing anything?
Rough.

While the Create-A-Skater apparel selection seems fine, it’s not as expanded as they made it sound like it was? The selection also shares little resemblence with the original games. It might be a different experience if they merged it together with the content from THPS 1 + 2? Then again, some content is also very familar and inherited from 1 + 2. Really makes you wish this was DLC.

Regarding Multiplayer - unlike THPS 1 + 2 you will need to create/login to an Activison Online account. It makes up for it by allowing for cross-play with non-PC platforms though. However, it is worth pointing out the change and some will be turned off by it and its implementation.

As for the new levels, only Waterpark is one that I feel really enthusiastic about in multiplayer Free Skate. The Movie Set environment doesn’t seem to be doing it for me in that department. It just doesn’t have ‘skate spots’ for that sorta thing.

Lobbies you can preview, so you can pick a session to join instead of being thrown into whatever their backend decides to throw you in. Sometimes you want to avoid a specific playlist or person. There’s just such a lack of control and transparency there.

Things They Can Add To Make Up For It

That said, there’s lots of other things players have requested since THPS 1 + 2 that Iron Galaxy can still put in. Hopefully their overlords will let them do something to make a few things right with the fans. Addressing any of these would go a long way.

These Have Been Requested Long Before Release

Unlike part 4 there is also no Set Custom Restart Point option. It’d be nice to see that patched in. Please add Set Custom Restart Point so people can practice lines on these bigger maps. This is especially is a must for the bigger levels like Los Angeles or Shipyard.

There’s also no text chat of any kind. They’re probably keeping it simple for themselves because of cross-play but it’s something the players need and want on PC if they don’t have access to voice.

There’s no spectating. We want to watch others do lines too, you know!

Improvements To New Additions

The Movie Studio level has some questionable collision on one of the light-cranes you can grind downstairs, the one side facing a vert ramp. It’s pretty difficult to miss.

The Photo Mode lacks depth-of-field, and a per-object motion-blur options. One could produce much better photos with access to those. The brightness/exposure settings aren’t enough to fix photos that have ‘potential’ are falling just short due to the composition being flat.

There’s no Replay mode. Photo Mode feels weird without this. I very much miss being able to save replays of sessions from the original games and It wouldn’t take much to record a single session into computer memory. Being forced to pause the game while you’re doing crazy lines tends to throw you off afterwards when switching into Photo Mode, and there’s already lots of moments I missed that I wish I could have captured.

On Steam Deck - Worth It?

Yes. It works out of the box, with the default Proton tool selection. The performance using the default quality settings is balanced. The game has initial hiccups in large, open levels like Waterpark and London, but things seem to smooth out when skating for a bit.

Using the on screen keyboard to sign up for multiplayer was clunky, but doable.

The only major issue has to do with the built-in Steam Deck controls. Hook up a controller via Bluetooth, or plug something in via USB. The form factor isn’t the greatest for this type of gameplay in our opinion, but you may have the magic hands.

On a full battery charge, you get about 3.5 hours worth of gameplay.

The Verdict

The verdict is this: If you loved Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, you’ll want this one. If you expected more than what the previous game had to offer, you won’t find much aside from extras for the creative players. Improved Create-A-Park and the introduction of a Photo Mode are very much worth noting. Some players will get lost in either of those, thanks to their additions.

This is quite literally a modern remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3… plus levels from 4. It’s missing a lot of content from 4 that got lost in the conversion process to the 2 minute timer format. That said, what is there is good. The level remakes are all solid, and ultimately improve them.

And in terms of the price, it’s not exactly competing with the rest of the AAA titles either. You get a pretty good remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. That counts for something… right?

The risks Iron Galaxy took are in their contributions to the level pool, which makes sense.
If players want more of these types of games, someone will have to be able to create new stuff going forward.

That’s the idea, right? Now what will the future of Tony Hawk’s videogame emporium look like? More remakes? Something new?

We know Tony is supposedly fighting hard to get Underground remade. Will that happen? We do not yet know. But it’s unlikely they they will try to streamline that game, now that would be nefarious.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is available on Steam, starting today.