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PlayStation: PS2 Reviews

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Review

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

9.0

Format PlayStation 2

Developer Activision

Publisher Activision

Genre Sports

22-Dec-2001 In our dreams, we can skate like gods. In real life, we fall down stairs when we're not even on a board.

In our dreams, we can skate like gods. In real life, we fall down stairs when we're not even on a board.

Kids are good at skate-boarding because they aren't afraid of serious injuries. Why should they be? After all, the only consequence of snapping young limbs is loads of time off school and all your mates signing rude words on your plaster cast.

Proper adults, on the other hand, can't go throwing themselves recklessly off badly constructed wooden ramps because they have important things to worry about, like jobs, mortgages and football. And also, the thought of your knees bending the wrong way makes us feel sick. But wouldn't it be cool if you could combine being grown-up, and being good at skateboarding? God, yeah, wouldn't that be so cool?

The only way to solve this near-impossible paradox is to become so good at skateboarding that people who make shoes or videogames offer to give you money in return for pretending to like them. Then you can happily pay the cost of private medical insurance and carry on breaking bones without a care in the world. Only a few people get this good. One of them is Tony Hawk, and since he's already rich and famous you can put that real board down, stop trying to be a hero, and just play his new game instead. Trust us, it's a lot less painful.

TRIPLE KICKFLIP
While you can choose to muck about and practice in Single Session and Free Skate modes, the real action is going on in the Career game. Here each of the ten real-life skaters, including the slightly insane Bam Margera from MTV's Jackass, has almost 60 objectives to complete, spread over eight levels. The most common objective is to get a big score – there are three targets to hit on most stages, but each level also has a set of unique things to do. Whether it's knocking a fat, old man into some water at the Foundry, or triggering a major earthquake in Los Angeles, there's enough variation to make it worth seeing the game through.

Three out of the eight main stages are Tournaments. Here you're competing against the other big-name skaters in three one-minute heats overseen by five judges. Only your two best heats count towards your final score, but with par scores of around 80 per cent they're are ultra-tough to win. And since they must be completed with at least a bronze medal to progress through the game, Tournaments may cause serious amounts of stress to players who haven't mastered the full range of tricks.

Fortunately, basic skating is very simple. Steer with the d-pad or left analog stick, hold X to crouch, release it to ollie. Alright, jump. Combinations of direction and Square equal flip tricks, Circle is grab tricks and Triangle is grinds and stalls. Link moves together in the air to do combos and power up your boost meter. Once that's full, you can perform more advanced Special moves that need a load of air to work properly. Be careful though, because repeating tricks reduces their score each time you use them, so just kick-flipping for two minutes won't get you anywhere.

BS REVERT
When the original Tony Hawk's game was doing the rounds, we were happy to just be able to flip, grab and grind in the comfort of our own homes. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 added the manual, a nifty balancing move to link tricks together on open ground. Tap Up then Down, or the reverse, and your rider flips the board on to one truck. You then have to watch the balance meter, but pulling a manual when you land a trick means you can launch into another one a few seconds later and have it count as the same combo.

It gets even more complex than that in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. Coming out of a pipe, you can now tap R2 as you hit the ground to pull off a revert. This spins the board round to your default stance (rather than 'switch') so you can then link into a manual and on into more tricks. Keep your balance, and it's theoretically possible to perform an infinite chain of moves. This is reflected in some of the high scores you have to reach – targets of more than 250,000 points in two minutes crop up later in the game which means you need some serious combos. You have to make an effort to land the board straight – it's not as forgiving in this regard as the old Hawk's games, but you soon get used to it.

The eight main levels are a mixture of almost-real-life and totally fictional locations. So alongside a recreation of Skater's Island, an awesome indoor park from Rhode Island, you also have a sprawling Canadian forest featuring totem poles, snowploughs and icy water and a neon-soaked Tokyo stage that features downright-dangerous full pipes. Most of the courses are very cleverly laid out, and have scope for massive trick combos or even infinite grinds where you can loop right round the level in one go. This is perfect for multiplayer, but a couple of parks are a little more linear and obviously designed more around Career mode objectives instead.

MANUAL
Multiplayer has always been an integral part of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater experience, and part three keeps the tradition going in style. Familiar modes return, with Graffiti and Horse proving to be as fluid and just as addictive as ever, but you can now also play games of Slap! and King of the Hill as well as simple score attacks and free skates (check the No, You're The Horse panel for more multiplayer details).

A much more significant multi-player development is that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is the first PS2 game to offer online play. Yeah, really. You have to shell out extra for your own modem or broadband adaptor, and it's early days so this is very much an experimental service before Sony rolls out its own online systems next year, but we can't think of a better game to start the Internet party with (see The 'I' Word, above, for details on going online).
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 doesn't look quite as polished as AirBlade (reviewed last issue), but the levels are generally a load bigger and there's a wealth of texture detail, even down to trainer treads and seams on the skaters' jeans. That jerkiness from the PSone originals, which was down to the games pushing the console as far as it would go, is long gone and the skaters now move with the kind of languid grace you'd expect from people who've made a lot of money while having fun.

540° McTWIST
However skaters don't manage to stay upright all the time, and so bails are much improved over the previous games too. So as well as just 'falling off', there are now painful-looking animations to cover the delights of smashing up your knee really badly and slipping chin-first on to a rail. If you mess up a low-speed trick, your rider might even just leap away unharmed as the board skitters upside down across the concrete. Big slip-ups also generate slightly unnecessary sprays of blood, which can be fired all over the side of buildings if you get the angle just right.

Skate games invariably feature skate bands. But while most of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 soundtrack is made up of middle-class American kids mangling guitars and shouting, there are few pleasant surprises. Like the perennial Ace of Spades by Motorhead – cheesy as hell, but strangely apt while you're skidding off a moose in deepest Canada. Chuck in some vintage Ramones and a sprinkling of cutting-edge hip hop from the likes of Redman and KRS-One, and you're on the way to a soundtrack most will be able to enjoy. You can even edit the playlist to chop out Alien Ant Farm and their tedious nu-metal compatriots. Fans of pop or dance will be better off killing the in-game tunes altogether and whacking on the stereo instead.

There's an enormous amount to the game that we haven't even touched on. A comprehensive skate park editor with 20 pre-built courses. Full character creation capability that lets you change the appearance of the default skaters. A training mode that explains each element of the trick system and helps you work reverts and manuals into killer combos. There's a even a demo of Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder, which is essentially Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with snow and hills.
ONE GIANT LEAP FOR SKATEKIND

All this combines to create what is one of the best games doing the rounds on PlayStation 2. But it's essentially the same as two of the best games on PSone, and if you've spent years caning the previous versions you might find yourself tiring of Tony and co's antics quickly. That's not to say we're looking at a pointless update, however. The online multiplayer mode is a massive step forward for PS2, and there are enough new tricks and cool stages to keep you skating for ages. It's as playable as ever, with tricks and combos transferring from your fingers to the screen. So the diagnosis is simple: if the PSone games didn't grind your rail, or you just hate skateboarding, don't buy this game. Everyone else: consider it your moral duty as someone interested in having fun to own it.

Stephen Fulljames

Overview

Verdict

Tony proves that three really is the magic number

Uppers

Supremely playable

First online PS2 game

Looks 'gnarly'

Excellent park and character editors

One of the best two-player games around

Some levels are brilliant...

Downers

...but some are a bit shonky

Music won't suit all tastes

Screenshots

Interactive

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Screenshots

1 / 14 Screenshots

NO, YOU'RE THE HORSE

Playing THPS3 with mates is the perfect way to waste time. Most of the time you'll be playing split-screen two-player, but online up to four can take part depending on your connection speed.

Colour the park by tricking off ramps, rails and so on. 'Steal' from your opponent by doing more impressive combos. The one with the most items in their colour at the end wins.

Choose a word. Player one sets a single trick score and player two must beat it. When someone bails, they get a letter of the word. First player to collect all the letters loses.

See how many times you can knock the other player over in two minutes. Fastest-moving skater wins in each collision, but it's often hard to tell where the hell the other player is.

Like Tag with a scary floating crown. Once someone has grabbed the crown, their timer starts. The idea is to hold on to it for a set amount of time while fending off the attentions of other players. As easy as it sounds.

mobile freakshow

The character creator isn't a new addition to the Tony Hawk's experience, but in Pro Skater 3 you can edit the look of any of the 'proper' skaters, and even give them 3D glasses and clown shoes if that's what you fancy doing.