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The thing is the THPS 1 & 2 Remasters added a lot, ignoring the questionable āadd manuals/reverts into stages that werenāt built for themā (thankfully this could be turned on or off) they added a ton of new objectives and goals for every stage in the game. That was what made it worthwhile and thatās the thing most likely to be tossed to the wayside with the change in developers, if this just ends up being THPS 3 & 4 but prettier itāll be a huge letdown.
Iām not sure if it was just because I was playing the ps1 version but I remember Tony Hawk 3 being kind of a major step back. That had that awful, ugly mall stage right? Was that better on fancier consoles?
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It was primarily designed for the next generation of consoles so yes. PS2 was the main version
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THPS 3 was a bigger/worse version of THPS 2. THPS 4 took the lessons of Aggressive Inline and changed the whole set-up to get rid of time limits and be built around one ābigā playthrough as opposed to several shorter ones.
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4 is when the emphasis started to shift from just skating to doing jackass stuff which is epitomized by the underground games that followed it
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I like 3 but yea its end of the line for the arcade game.
All the move additions added (as mentioned, optionally) in the remaster definitely show the collapse. Revert in 3 is the least questionable because it solves the problem of rampsā total irrelevance to scoring. They were clearly concerned about this in forgotten half-sequel 2x cuz it also had a way to combo out of ramps in its new levels. 3 in general added like what, that and lip trick balance? It was pretty clearly attempting to port over the arcadey stuff without overstuffing the premise.
But by 4 they were definitely pivoting to Banjo Kazooie. It has the story mode where youre talking to people who give u quests. All the additions extend combos at the cost of demanding any attention to level design, wall plant disregards lines by reversing entirely on a dime, and spine transfers close up a lot of strictness on spatial navigation within a combo, also a panic press lands almost any combo that would otherwise bail. But the flexibility allows a lot of like, freeform exploration and spatial weirdness for secrets i guess.
RIP Burnout
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revert was so good and important that there wasnt really anywhere else to go from there. spine transfer in 4 just didnt change things the same way
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thps3 is the rare occurrence where iām with the majority of game reviewers. itās the best one in the series.
all downhill (ha) from there.
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Weirdly, I only ever played the PS1 version of THPS3 as a kid and didnāt realize until maybe a decade ago that it came out on PS2 and was the flagship version
Similarly, my only experience with THPS4 was the GBA portā¦ I should probably give these a try
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iāve been playing THPS 3 (PS2) again recently, i will also agree itās still the best one, or at least my favorite one but I havenāt sunk in the time recently like I did decades ago. I havenāt played 4 in so long, I remember liking it with the best moveset, but i think the already mentioned drift into open world mission structure and leaning into the CKY/Jackass stuff was the beginning of the end. I still had a lot of fun with the THPS 1-2 remaster so Iāll see what happens with 3-4.
I remember disliking a lot of early PS2 sequels to PS1 games as a kid ā both GT3 and Tony Hawk 3 felt like they just didnāt have It in comparison to GT2 / THPS2, and while deep down I know that this is because my aesthetic pedantry is deep seated in a way that made me prefer the PS1 rendering to a degree that is silly to seek any kind of critical consensus on, Iām curious how Iād feel about the level design and mechanics on their own without that context
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i think if iām being honest, to me the Dreamcast port of THPS2 is Peak Tony Hawk game but I definitely want to go back and play through 3 and 4 because I sunk so many hours into those when they came out and felt like they were the last āreal onesā even after I sunk many hours into THUG 1 and 2 (games I did not like very much but still played a bunch)
I was always in the grind session camp because it had a better soundtrack
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hearing the beginning riff of the CKY song in pro skater 3 always makes me laugh
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Seeing the fireball mode added for T.H.U.G was the first time I felt sorry for a game developer.
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I put that song in my gta4 user track radio because every time it comes on I start laughing
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See the thing isā¦ this is what the revert did as well. Itās why the series never reached the heights of THPS2 again as it no longer really mattered what kind of approach you wanted to make, you could more or less just chain anything into anything so it no longer really mattered. I can see one liking the more open approach afterwards, I still enjoyed the series for another few games, but the revert is what definitively shifted the series from one kind of game into another.
FWIW THPS 2 was reviewed better than 3 but got sucked into a weird pseudo review bombing deal some years back which shifted everything around, I believe because someone pointed out it was like the #2 highest rated game on metacritic behind only Ocarina of Time and the type of person who cared about that kind of thing flipped out. Gamers are dumb.
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I think the revert in & of itself is pretty harmless, reverts donāt build momentum, in a half pipe itās maybe two max before coming to a stop. Ramp tricks are also riskier than grinds or manuals cuz (pre-4) if you hit one at the wrong angle youāll be forced into a bail.
Really, manuals + grinds that build momentum are what break the game in terms of approach. 3ās level design lets people get away with a lot, but primarily because thereās a lot of vertically oriented levels & stray grind lines that magnetize in mid-air & build speed. Reverts let you stretch things out a bit longer but the same is true if you ignore them to just do manuals and grinds. (Which is exactly the strat when I looked up a speedrun)
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I understand the desire to keep it grounded OG1/2 style with short combos that look closer to what skating is in real life instead of some idealized superhero fantasy of pulling multiple 900s in a row, but I feel that the way the later games translate the idea of turning the architecture into your playground in a way thatās at least equally valid and engaging for a far longer time if you choose to improve your skills. High level THPS right now is basically all about finding a long complicated line of objects you can consistently perform tricks on, rotating every trick in your movelist to max out scoring potential, and repeating the line for as long as your skills allow you to. You see a loop, you test it out, you train, you execute, itās fun if youāre into that part of the skating fantasy. Have a combo vid with some Asobi Seksu.
THUG Pro is definitely ridiculous about the way record combos go up to billions, THPS1+2 made deliberate decisions to combat score inflation and make hundreds of millions the ceiling, but the general idea is the same, you canāt repeat using the same objects and tricks too often because your balance and scoring potential immediately take a major hit, like the low-level trick of grinding the same rail multiple times to quickly increase your multiplier and momentum is no good if you want to reach major leagues, reverts lower your speed the more times you use them, doing a manual for longer than absolutely necessary is no good, etc. AndyTHPS has a good tutorial if you want to understand the system and see if itās your thing, I can see why one could consider it flawed but it does aim to promote interesting play.
The real game in THPS1+2 to me is secret score challenges, the Warehouse has a 100k Sick Score goal but a 22m platinum challenge, and getting there is fun but the game does nothing to educate you about how or why you should get there, you wonāt even know those goals are there unless you google them. 3+4 press notes mention a NG+ cycle with gradually evolving goals, and Ninja Gaiden style loops is exactly the kind of thing the series needs (alongside some advanced tutorials, ideally), put the SKATE letters in absolutely crazy spots, make the Foundry Sick Score 10 millions and so on. The gap between skill floor and skill ceiling is absolutely huge and the series could blow a lot of minds if it started bridging it.
Then again, Iām really not fond of how the more boringly realistic and corporate 1+2 aesthetic clashes against this whole Neversoft madness, and Iām not happy to see 3+4 continue that trend, some of these redone levels are just tiring to process visually and Iām assuming the UI is as trash as it was in the Vicarious Visions game. Iām assuming the career changes in THPS4 are at least partially motivated by them not wanting to rework the disarmingly amateurish Dudes Being Dudes writing, āscare off these BIRDS that are crapping all over the goddamn place!!!ā and ātry not to BARF while doing these five sick lines with your tummy full of fast food >:)ā is probably the kind of stuff the higher ups want to see redone or gone. And while the promise of the legendary skaters and tracks coming back is nice, I think Jenna Jameson and the song in which Chad Muska drops the N-word three times are probably not among them.
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