Geekscape Games Reviews: ‘Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5’

I was born in 1990.

Thus, I was just 9 years old when the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game took my Playstation, and my life, by storm in the Summer of 1999. I had wanted a skateboard for what felt like forever at that point, but 1) my mother was overprotective, and 2) honestly, I’m clumsy as hell (still, as an adult), and I more-than-likely would have hurt myself.

So, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater became MY game. It rarely left my Playstation, until the sequel came out, of course, which probably didn’t leave my Playstation until its sequel, and so on. I still think that, to this day, all these years later, I put more hours into Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 than any other game I’ve ever played, and that includes a myriad of RPGs, as well as a two year on-again-off-again relation ship with World of Warcraft.

So you can imagine my dismay when the series evolved into, well, utter shit.

Tony Hawk’s Underground brought an entirely new mechanic to the series: a plot, and its expansive levels and heavy customization brought the series to a new how-could-it-get-any-better high. Then, an excited, young Derek picked up Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, and while that younger version of me immensely appreciated the return of the classic campaign alongside the Underground career mode, I could barely recognize the Jackass-fueled, way too silly storyline. In this iteration, the game became less about skating, combos, gaps, and high-scores, and instead focussed more on how-can-we-fit-the-Jackass-crew-into-this-goal.

After THUG2, and wanting to relive my gaming glory days, I tried the next couple of iterations before I essentially gave up completely. That was the last Tony Hawk title that I put any amount of time into until the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD in 2012, but after spending a few hours in that world, it was pretty clear that while the maps felt the same, everything else about the title felt different and unfamiliar.

Enter Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. Rumours of another, actual Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater title surfaced with Tony doing press for the now-cancelled-but-surprisingly-polished-looking mobile, free-to-play endless runner Tony Hawk’s Shred Session. The game was hinted at for some time before Tony himself revealed it at Sony’s CES conference back in January.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 is the first proper Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater title since 2007. It was marketed (obviously, with that 5 in the title), as a back-to-basics iteration for the series. Dropping the ridiculous storylines, off-board antics, and all of the other fluff (or fat, depending on who you speak to) that took the focus away from what mattered: the damned skating.

I was really, really excited for this latest iteration. As is pretty obvious from the above paragraphs, I’m I’ve been passionate about the series since childhood, and with the passion that Tony Hawk and the Robomodo team spoke about this title, I hoped (and believed all too wholeheartedly) that my favourite childhood game was coming back.

Now that I’ve spent a bunch of time with the title, it’s pretty clear that this is not the second coming I was hoping for. The game is honestly chock-full of noticable issues, but at the same time, I’m actually having more fun playing a THPS5 than I have any other game in the series in years.

Before I really jump into things, I’d like to note that according to Activision, they’re taking the myriad of issues that people are having with the game very seriously, to the point where they’ve actually delayed the release of the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game indefinitely, so that the entire team at Robomodo can work on fixing these issues. So hopefully, this current version of the game is the worst that the game will be, and will steadily improve from here on out. Hopefully.

Really, the first thing that you’re likely to notice about the THPS5 is its graphics. I’m the first one that’ll tell you that graphics are unimportant in the long run, and that of course, gameplay, atmosphere, and plot are far more important. That being said, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 looks bad. The earliest, worst looking games released for the PS4 and Xbox One look far better than this game does in almost every aspect, and it’s pretty crazy that a full-priced title looks like it’s using assets from a game that came out mid last-gen. Even with its poor looks, nearly any time that you’re trying to complete an objective with numerous objects onscreen, you’re bound to be greeted by slowdown until those objects are removed. It really doesn’t make any sense for a game that looks like this to be so poorly optimized. The one silver lining here is that I actually do like the character models this time around. The skaters utilize a stylish cel-shaded look, meaning that their appearances are simpler than you might expect, but they also look decidedly more modern than the rest of the game. There’s really not much more to say about the title’s appearance. It looks bad, it slows down all too much, and aside from the pastel-looking, semi-colourful skaters, the colours are as dull as Fallout‘s wasteland. I’m not overly sure just how much these new skaters represent their real life counterparts, however, as I’ve been out of the skating scene for a number of years. I was pretty confused to see Lil’ Jon available as a playable skater for instance, but I stuck with my man Tony, so I didn’t care enough to look up just why he was there. There’s also a fairly robust create-a-skater mode, so you should be able to Frankenstein up almost whoever you like.

Sound fares a lot better (at least in some regards). I’m not sure what the last couple of iterations have featured (as my time with each of them was brief and forgettable), but in THPS5, gone are the Ska-heavy, I-still-have-them-on-my-phone-today tunes of the earlier games. Those titles featured high-energy tracks that somehow made you want to skate faster, jump higher, and try that one last trick even though you know you’ll probably bail and have your huge combo ruined. The soundtrack here, much to Shane O’Hare’s disagreement, elicits none of those feelings. It’s music, and it’s fine, but I can’t imagine more than a handful of players wanting to listen to these tracks outside of playtime, which is a far cry from those earlier games that I can’t…stop…talking…about (sorry).

Aside from the music, the sound is all pretty appropriate. Grinds sound like grinds, bails sound like bails, the sounds of your wheels rolling accross the pavement give you a far better sense of speed than the framerate often does, and so on!

Level design is on the same level (yep) as the game’s soundtrack. Sure, it’s there, and they are definitely playable stages. You can certainly jump, flip, grab, grind, and not get off your board (just like it should be), but most of the game’s 8 stages feel uninspired at best (aside from the re-mixes of classic levels). Aside from the rare, actually excellent gap, objects on the map can sometimes feel as though they’ve been placed randomly, and are definitely not conducive to big combos or smooth navigation. They feel just a few steps up from what’s possible in the Create-A-Park mode, which is a sad testament to the overall design of the game.

The absolute worst aspect of the game? Worse than the terrible graphics, bad level design, or every bug in the game combined? There’s no freaking split screen multiplayer. I don’t know who’s decision this was, but to remove the absolute, most memorable aspect of every Tony Hawk game ever is complete blasphemy. Nope, you can’t do score runs, play H-O-R-S-E, or any other mode if you have friends over. You want to know some of my greatest memories growing up? Some cool trip? No. Good grades? Hell no.  First concert? Nope. First kiss? Well, yeah. But also, it was playing any Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, competitively, on the same couch as my friends. You just cannot get the same sense of competition, or struggle, or fun, or anything, if you’re not sitting right beside someone. Not having local multiplayer is understandable in a lot of games, as a console’s resources are taken up by running one instance of the game, let alone two, but THPS5 is not one of those games, and not having local multiplayer is possibly the worst misstep in the franchise. F***.

Alright, that’s a lot of complaining in just a few short paragraphs, so let’s get to some positives: the actual gameplay. The movement, the physics, and general skating all feel closer to Tony Hawk’s glory (Neversoft) days than they have in years. Honestly, after reading a myriad of first impressions articles and early reviews in the first days of the game’s release, I expected Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, a title that I’d been excited for since its announcement, to be even worse than previous iterations. My expectations at that point went from hopeful to heartbroken, and I expected to pick up a controller and have to force myself through the worst game this side of Silent Hill: Homecoming (another beloved series of mine that has been reduced to an unrecognizable state from its original glory). When I was finally able to pick up a controller, something completely unexpected happened: I had a lot of fun.

Yep. I felt nostalgic as hell playing this game, which hasn’t happened with a title in this series for as long as I can remember. Trying to surpass Sick scores (and trying to surpass them in one combo), along with grabbing (too easy) Secret Tapes and DVD’s, collecting SKATE and COMBO, and all the old, classic goals felt fantastic, despite THPS5‘s poor level design. Sometimes, I had so much fun trying to complete an objective or keep a combo going that I actually utilized the PS4’s built-in recording feature, which is the first time in nearly three years of owning a PS4 that I’ve even felt like touching that funtionality. It made me really miss the absolutely incredible replay functionality of EA’s unfortunately defunct Skate series, as the expanded, cinematic functionality of that replay mode would have had me trying to complete certain gaps or making cerain moves for far longer than I did. I even had some fun with the game’s new, somewhat silly objectives, like ‘pop all the baloons in the pool in a certain amount of time’, although things got pretty repetitive once I realized that many of these goals (or slight variations of them) are featured in each stage.

THPS5 also introduces a new mechanic that’s tough to get used to, but actually really cool. Basically, pressing the Grind button while midair will elicit a ‘Slam’. This means that no matter where you are; whether you’re flying over a ramp that you’d wanted to hit, inadvertantly jumping over a rail you’d wanted to grind, and so on, simply hitting that Grind button will send you quickly towards the ground and (hopefully) onto your missed target. Again, it takes some time to get used to, especially as it’s mapped to the Grind button, but once you mess it up fourty or fifty times, you should have a pretty good idea of how to use the Slam to your advantage!

There are bugs (a lot of bugs), mostly from what I’ve seen so far with the game’s always on multiplayer. You’ll see up to 20 other skaters hopping around each level, and the idea around it was a more connected, social skating experience, which actually sounds pretty awesome. Unfortunately, I’m often getting hit (or hitting) skaters that I can’t see, or the online player’s animations look like something out of <insert poorly animated movie here>. You’re also consistenly greeted by a giant announcement that takes up far too much of the screen whenever a player enters or leaves the level, and with up to 20 players on each map, I feel as though these messages are onscreen more often than not. In a quick-moving game that requires focus and perfect timing, having constantly changing messages onscreen (and taking up again, far too much screen space), can really distract you, and has messed up more than a few awesome runs in my lengthy playtime. Aside from that, I haven’t fallen through a stage, gotten stuck in a corner, jumped off anything that wasn’t there, or really witnessed any of the other issues that many other outlets are reporting plague the title.

Really, the biggest thing that’s plaguing the title is that sticky, uninspired feeling that I’ve been mentioning throughout this review. That beings said, uninspired does not equal un-fun.

Is the game worth its currently full-priced admission? In its current state, probably not, but that’s all relative to just how desperate you are for a new action-sports game. Stages are fairly limited at 8, but the large amount of goals available for each (and the legitimately challenging Pro goals unlocked afterwards), should keep you busy for quite some time. Activision, as a likely apology for early adopters of the title, has announced that two additional stages, and five additional skaters, will be coming to the game at no extra charge at some point in the future. I’m sure that at one point this was intended to be paid DLC, but the fact that every player will get it at no cost is surely a nice ‘sorry you had to play with bugs’ gesture.

You know how sometimes you’ll watch something on Netflix (or even pay for it at a theatre), something that you know is bad (and the ratings reflect it), and then you end up enjoying the hell out of it anyways? You probably don’t tell anyone that you enjoyed it since they’re bound to make fun of you and tell all of your other friends and… well you get my point. That’s kinda how I feel about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. I don’t know what shade of rose the older games have put over my glasses, but I’m certainly not seeing (or playing) the steaming pile of code that I’ve read accross the rest of the internet. It’s unpolished, it’s uninspired, but I’m having fun, and for some reason, I can’t wait to play more. Though again, I wish I could have some fun with my friends (locally).

Then again, I wish a lot of things about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, but all said and done, I am glad that it exists.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 scores a playable 2.5/5.