Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 – Everything You Need to Know
Many gave up hope of another Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater remake after Vicarious Visions, creators of the acclaimed THPS 1 + 2, was merged into Blizzard Entertainment. To the delight of many, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was announced for a July 11th release under the development of Iron Galaxy Studios back in March. There’s lots of interesting new additions to this hotly anticipated remake, so let’s get into what’s changed and stayed the same.
Includes All Original Skaters and most of the Original Levels
The only original levels missing from this remake are Carnival and Chicago from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4; the rest are included in HD splendor. As a fan of the original Chicago level, with its interesting bridges and tight streets, I do lament these absences, but there’s always room fro future DLC, right? The good news is every original skater returns in the remake, with a bunch of brand-new pro skaters joining the fray. It’s worth mentioning that the original games included various console exclusive and unlockable special skaters, which largely don’t make it into the new roster. Bye, bye, Neversoft Eyeball and Ollie the Bum, I’ll miss your HD glow-up.
New Levels
Iron Galaxy is softening the Carnival and Chicago blow a bit by giving us three brand new levels to enjoy. We’ve seen footage and screenshots of two of the new levels: namely Waterpark and Pinball. Waterpark features intricate water slides that are just perfect to slalom and do tricks off of. Additionally, the drained out pool at the bottom provides vert skaters plenty of room to chain combos together. Pinball, on the other hand, provides a neon-bathed eye-candy of an environment that makes you feel like you’re skating inside a classic pinball machine. The third Movie Studio park only has a screenshot with a crashed UFO on the side of a building, but we’re looking forward to some film references that could populate the new level as we try it for ourselves.
Classic 2-Minute Goal Format
The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series has primarily been structured around 2-minute timer runs aimed at getting the best high score and accomplish a variety of challenges. The fun with this is familiarizing oneself with the levels through multiple runs, enough to eventually tackle every challenge in a single 2-minute session. This format changed with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and its far more open-ended approach to its freeroam Career mode.
No Returning Career or Freeroam for THPS 4
Sadly, THPS 4’s career mode isn’t returning for the remake, as THPS 3 + 4 aims to streamline and purify the formula to match the classics. So, like those before it, THPS 4 is structured around the classic 2-minute timer, shaking up the entire format of the original version quite a bit. For example, some NPC missions require much more than 2 minutes to accomplish, tasking the player with going from A to B across a larger map and doing multiple fetch quests in a single task. But Iron Galaxy has come up with a solution to the bigger levels and longer quests, even if it’s not the freeroam people necessarily want.
THPS 4 Timer Can Be Extended
While you’re still forced onto a timer in THPS 4, that timer can be extended between a range of 10 minutes to an hour, allowing the ability to leisurely freeroam and tackle longer challenges within that time frame.
THPS 4 Minigames
Another beloved aspect of THPS 4 was its endearing minigames. Well, those are also scrapped in Iron Galaxy’s remake. The fandom is somewhat divided concerning minigames in the series. On one hand, they offer gameplay variety and a sensation of unexpectedness, on the other, their inclusion tends to dilute the pure arcade emphasis of the original three titles. I fall in the former camp, as someone who enjoyed the sheer zaniness and creativity from THPS 4’s career mode. Whether it was playing tennis or driving a garbage truck around the college campus, these minigames helped the fourth entry stand out, so it’s something of a shame we don’t get that with this remake.
Additional Pro Goals
Something we do get, however, are an extra helping of stuff to do after we complete the initial 10 goals in each THPS 4 level. They’re adding something called ‘Pro Goals’, which are basically more difficult challenges that explore complex lines and aspects of a level not explored in the initial 10 goals. In THPS 4’s special case, they directly involve those lengthy exploratory missions that a 2-minute timer couldn’t complete.
Returning Tricks
Most of this info has focused on THPS 4 in particular, so let’s circle back and go over the tricks the remake is keeping and altering for the two games. Obviously, the combo-extending revert that THPS 3 initially introduced returns for both games here, in addition to standard trick variations like double kickflips and the like. The original THPS 4 was notable for introducing spine transfers to the series, something the THPS 1 + 2 injected into its remakes, which arrives for both THPS 3 and 4 as well. This means that THPS 3 parks can feel fresh thanks to the new usage of tricks from THPS 4 (notably the spine transfer).
Enhanced Skitching
So most of the basic trick toolset from THPS 1 + 2 carries over here unscathed, but what about new tricks? Well, THPS 4 famously introduces skitching, which consists of hanging onto the back of cars or, most notably, elephants in the case of an infamous zoo mission. As the creative director for THPS 3 + 4 highlights, skitching is getting expanded, now allowing skaters to combo into a skitch and not just end a combo on one. The best part of it is that these new skitch mechanics are added onto THPS 3, a game that never had such a feature to begin with.
Create-A-Skater Mode
Very little has been divulged regarding the Create-a-Skater mode, except that it will be featured for both THPS 3 and THPS 4. If it’s like THPS 1 + 2, your custom skaters will be able to partake in a Career mode with special goals not available to pro skaters. The creation tools were pretty limited in the last game, so here’s hoping we get some glasses and a height/weight slider this time.
Create-A-Park Mode
One of my favorite things to do in any THPS game is crafting the weirdest and most ridiculous park imaginable. I think it was Tony Hawk’s Underground where I went especially nuts with it, making a kind of floating rainbow road map that me and my friends would have fun racing through. Well, THPS 3 + 4 brings that mode back and adds 4’s wonderful create a goal and NPC quests into the toolset. We don’t know if the object limit is raised above what THPS 1 + 2 had but it’d be great to relive the days making crazy stuff from the Underground games.
Graphics and Performance
If you looked at this game in motion and thought it looked identical in graphical fidelity to THPS 1 +2, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Both 1 + 2 and 3 + 4 are made in Unreal Engine 4, so the lighting and texturing look very similar. Still, it’s going to be awesome seeing our favorite parks from 3 and 4 lit up in 4K and running at 60 frames a second.
Multiplayer
We can expect the familiar multiplayer modes of the last game to return for 3 + 4. Games of HORSE and tag are available strictly for couch co-op but there’s no word if 3 + 4 finally adds these modes to the online suite. For online, we can expect Free Skate, Trick Attack, Graffiti, Combo Mambo, and Score Attack. But there’s two brand new modes that Iron Galaxy has promised called HAWK and Competitive modes. The cool thing is multiplayer is cross-platform and supports up to eight players. The bad? Well, console players need PS Plus/Xbox Live/Nintendo Online subscriptions to participate in online multiplayer (like most games).
New Game+
And once you finish the core THPS 3 + 4 experience, you can take a gander at New Game+, which keeps your skater’s amazing end-game stats into another Career full of challenges. As stated before, THPS 4 includes the Pro Goals, which are incorporated into New Game+ as well.
Release Date and Price
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 releases on July 11 for all modern platforms. Those platforms are PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC. The remake will cost $49.99 for the standard edition, $69.99 for the Deluxe Edition, and $129.99 for the Collector’s Edition which comes with an actual Birdhouse skateboard (trucks and wheels sold separately) so you can also attempt to do 1/100th of what these games allow out into real world skateparks.
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