Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
You mean you actually have to read another review to know how good this game is? Okay, but you're wasting time not playing it...
Published: January 8, 2002
MAN, this game SUCKS! HA! Got your attention, didn't I? Seriously, though, what did you expect? Of course Tony Hawk 3 rocks. It rocks the collective socks off every poor sap that's picked up the controller. Case in point: after countless hours of playing and a mere few minutes before writing this review, a friend dropped by my place to drop off a couple of games. I happened to toss THPS3 in the PS2 and handed him the controller. Whether he knew it or not, while I put the finishing touches on another review, half an hour melted away without him knowing it. This is the kind of evil that Neversoft has created.
The Tony Hawk sequels have never really broken too far away from the mold that was formed when the guys at Neversoft saw the serious dearth of truly good skateboarding titles available on any system. This isn't a bad thing, of course, since the original boasted such great gameplay, and spawned a handful of clones that never really managed to capture that spark that made the originator so amazing. Still, Neversoft and their super-programmer serum seems to still have every bit of potency, because with each new game, they manage to deliver a key gameplay improvement that seems as if it had always been part of the game. With Tony Hawk 2, manuals offered a simple way to link ground tricks together, boosting combos and subsequent scores even higher. Tony Hawk 3 tosses in the revert, allowing you to string together vert tricks as well.
The result, of course, is mind-blowingly large scores for those that get good at both the revert and manuals, but score rewards have been given a slight nudge to make up for it -- especially in the later levels. However, scores now take a back seat to a couple more adventure-styled objectives in every level. Rather than just grinding on a couple benches (though there's still plenty of goals in that vein), you'll now have to scour the level looking for something to give to someone, or complete a goal to open up the ability to snag others. It feels a little more mission-based than the last games, and when you factor in the new boost in speed that everything moves along at, everything just feels like it's gotten a real kick in the gameplay pants. It would have been plenty easy for Neversoft to just up the resolution, whip up some new levels and it probably would have sold like playing the game would give you a harem of busty scantily-clad hotties, but luckily it all manages to stay simultaneously fresh yet familiar.
Create-a-park and create-a-skater are back and in shining form. Create-a-park has gotten a bit of an upgrade, so while among the easiest do-it-yourself level building offerings out there is still easy as ever, there's more choices as to which pieces you can slap into your park. Create-a-skater, likewise has been given a couple more choices, though the most noticeable chance will be the resolution and amount of detail; the PS2's obviously higher resolution and sharpness over the PlayStation goes a long way towards helping you flesh out a character that's more (or less, I suppose) like the real-life you. Smaller details like tattoos and facial hair are just more noticeable and cool looking.
While they're not an example of processor-crippling graphics prowess, and never really have been, the Tony Hawk games have always looked good on whatever platform they're on. The PlayStation versions looked about as respectable as a game could on the system, and even the ports carried out by third parties for other systems looked solid. The PlayStation 2 version maintains that rock-solid feel without ever looking flashy. It's a statement of subtlety, and thanks to Neversoft's commitment to making gameplay the center of attention, you never really think about the graphics. Sure, the level designs benefit a bit, with a couple times more polygons tossed into each level in the next-generation versions, but for the most part to ensure compatibility and cross-platform equality, the levels hold back.
Luckily, by keeping everything on an even keel, size-wise, it gives the PlayStation 2 a chance to show unknowing parents and even some gamers exactly how much of an improvement a jump from a 32- to 128-bit system really gives you, and the PS2 pulls it all off without breaking a sweat. Each level has as distinctive feel, more so than any of the previous games thanks to copious amounts of lighting and scads of clean, high-resolution textures. Nothing will blow you mind, graphics-wise, but again the focus of the series has never really been the visuals.
Music has always been a hallmark of the series. The stereotypical view of skaters by those who've never really taken the time to get into the sport is that everyone runs around in huge clothes listening to nothing but endless punk ad nauseum. This, of course, is far from the truth and for the most part the third soundtrack in the series seems to hit a couple of key sounds that at least my friends listened to back when I tried (unsuccessfully) to ollie higher than a centimeter for about a good three years. I think I did it. Once.
As the series has progressed, it's moved slowly away from the punkish undertones that first defined the sound, something that I'm not exactly enraptured to hear, but then I'm not every kid out there interested in skating. Tony Hawk 3 boasts probably the most variety in musical styles, though I've noticed a decided shift to the rap/R&B camp, and being that I moved out of my R&B phase quite a few years back to settle on the stereotypically Seattle-esque rock sound, I'm a bit disappointed. Musical styles range from the aforementioned rap and R&B stylings of Redman, Xhibit and KRS-One to punk (The Ramones, Bodyjar, Motorhead) to typical rockers like Rollins Bank and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In all there are 21 songs to pick from, and if you can't find something to enjoy there, you can always switch to a purely ambient aural background track.
Aside from the music, Tony Hawk 3 still sounds nice and clean, if solid when it comes to effects. Eventually, I'm sure, you will turn off the music, and when you do, you'll have to listen to the soft crackle of plastic on wood, concrete and metal. Most of the time it'll be a combination of those in rapid-fire succession since there's an obvious emphasis on grinding, well, everything this time around. The clap of board on concrete and the various mid-bail groans and oofs still make you a little queasy, especially since there have been a handful of new bails to complement all those perfect level-long runs you'll no doubt be pulling of in a matter of seconds.
Really, this is about a sure a thing as any sequel out there. It's blatantly obvious that the guys at Neversoft know exactly what they're doing. The fact that nobody has been able to do anything remotely resembling a good skateboarding game unless they completely rip off 90% of the gameplay from Tony Hawk says something. Each time a game is released, I wonder (albeit less and less with each iteration) why a skateboarding game up until now didn't include these kind of core gameplay elements. I can't really imagine what else those kooks at Neversoft are working on for Tony Hawk 4, but it's a sure bet that just like their first three efforts, it'll be instantly worth owning.
The Tony Hawk sequels have never really broken too far away from the mold that was formed when the guys at Neversoft saw the serious dearth of truly good skateboarding titles available on any system. This isn't a bad thing, of course, since the original boasted such great gameplay, and spawned a handful of clones that never really managed to capture that spark that made the originator so amazing. Still, Neversoft and their super-programmer serum seems to still have every bit of potency, because with each new game, they manage to deliver a key gameplay improvement that seems as if it had always been part of the game. With Tony Hawk 2, manuals offered a simple way to link ground tricks together, boosting combos and subsequent scores even higher. Tony Hawk 3 tosses in the revert, allowing you to string together vert tricks as well.
The result, of course, is mind-blowingly large scores for those that get good at both the revert and manuals, but score rewards have been given a slight nudge to make up for it -- especially in the later levels. However, scores now take a back seat to a couple more adventure-styled objectives in every level. Rather than just grinding on a couple benches (though there's still plenty of goals in that vein), you'll now have to scour the level looking for something to give to someone, or complete a goal to open up the ability to snag others. It feels a little more mission-based than the last games, and when you factor in the new boost in speed that everything moves along at, everything just feels like it's gotten a real kick in the gameplay pants. It would have been plenty easy for Neversoft to just up the resolution, whip up some new levels and it probably would have sold like playing the game would give you a harem of busty scantily-clad hotties, but luckily it all manages to stay simultaneously fresh yet familiar.
Create-a-park and create-a-skater are back and in shining form. Create-a-park has gotten a bit of an upgrade, so while among the easiest do-it-yourself level building offerings out there is still easy as ever, there's more choices as to which pieces you can slap into your park. Create-a-skater, likewise has been given a couple more choices, though the most noticeable chance will be the resolution and amount of detail; the PS2's obviously higher resolution and sharpness over the PlayStation goes a long way towards helping you flesh out a character that's more (or less, I suppose) like the real-life you. Smaller details like tattoos and facial hair are just more noticeable and cool looking.
While they're not an example of processor-crippling graphics prowess, and never really have been, the Tony Hawk games have always looked good on whatever platform they're on. The PlayStation versions looked about as respectable as a game could on the system, and even the ports carried out by third parties for other systems looked solid. The PlayStation 2 version maintains that rock-solid feel without ever looking flashy. It's a statement of subtlety, and thanks to Neversoft's commitment to making gameplay the center of attention, you never really think about the graphics. Sure, the level designs benefit a bit, with a couple times more polygons tossed into each level in the next-generation versions, but for the most part to ensure compatibility and cross-platform equality, the levels hold back.
Luckily, by keeping everything on an even keel, size-wise, it gives the PlayStation 2 a chance to show unknowing parents and even some gamers exactly how much of an improvement a jump from a 32- to 128-bit system really gives you, and the PS2 pulls it all off without breaking a sweat. Each level has as distinctive feel, more so than any of the previous games thanks to copious amounts of lighting and scads of clean, high-resolution textures. Nothing will blow you mind, graphics-wise, but again the focus of the series has never really been the visuals.
Music has always been a hallmark of the series. The stereotypical view of skaters by those who've never really taken the time to get into the sport is that everyone runs around in huge clothes listening to nothing but endless punk ad nauseum. This, of course, is far from the truth and for the most part the third soundtrack in the series seems to hit a couple of key sounds that at least my friends listened to back when I tried (unsuccessfully) to ollie higher than a centimeter for about a good three years. I think I did it. Once.
As the series has progressed, it's moved slowly away from the punkish undertones that first defined the sound, something that I'm not exactly enraptured to hear, but then I'm not every kid out there interested in skating. Tony Hawk 3 boasts probably the most variety in musical styles, though I've noticed a decided shift to the rap/R&B camp, and being that I moved out of my R&B phase quite a few years back to settle on the stereotypically Seattle-esque rock sound, I'm a bit disappointed. Musical styles range from the aforementioned rap and R&B stylings of Redman, Xhibit and KRS-One to punk (The Ramones, Bodyjar, Motorhead) to typical rockers like Rollins Bank and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. In all there are 21 songs to pick from, and if you can't find something to enjoy there, you can always switch to a purely ambient aural background track.
Aside from the music, Tony Hawk 3 still sounds nice and clean, if solid when it comes to effects. Eventually, I'm sure, you will turn off the music, and when you do, you'll have to listen to the soft crackle of plastic on wood, concrete and metal. Most of the time it'll be a combination of those in rapid-fire succession since there's an obvious emphasis on grinding, well, everything this time around. The clap of board on concrete and the various mid-bail groans and oofs still make you a little queasy, especially since there have been a handful of new bails to complement all those perfect level-long runs you'll no doubt be pulling of in a matter of seconds.
Really, this is about a sure a thing as any sequel out there. It's blatantly obvious that the guys at Neversoft know exactly what they're doing. The fact that nobody has been able to do anything remotely resembling a good skateboarding game unless they completely rip off 90% of the gameplay from Tony Hawk says something. Each time a game is released, I wonder (albeit less and less with each iteration) why a skateboarding game up until now didn't include these kind of core gameplay elements. I can't really imagine what else those kooks at Neversoft are working on for Tony Hawk 4, but it's a sure bet that just like their first three efforts, it'll be instantly worth owning.
