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Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 Review
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
Tony Hawk makes his way onto the Xbox, find out how it stacks up against the previous games and the other versions.
The Tony Hawkās series has established itself as one of the best videogames franchises out there; both one and two were great titles on whatever machine they came out on. Appealing to the mass market and the critics they have stunning gameplay coupled with re-playability and depth. However you probably know this already and are just reading this to find out whatās different in Tony Hawk 3 and is it any good on the Xbox, so lets crack on.
Whilst still immediately accessible to anyone who has played the first two games Tony Hawk 3 has some important changes. Firstly there is the introduction of the revert, which is about as important as the introduction of the manual in number two, as in it changes the way you approach your runs. The revert allows you to trick after landing from a ramp, thus letting you continue into a manual or ollie, letting you increase your run lengths to some insane levels. Reverts are is pulled off by simply pressing the shoulder triggers down when you land on a ramp, timing is important, but relatively soon it becomes second nature, just like the manuals did.
The revert is pretty much the only major change in the game, the rest of the differences are what you would expect. Level design is now a lot larger and the new generation of consoles has allowed the game designers a lot more freedom, for instance an earthquake in the Los Angeles levels that changes loads of stuff as you play. Characters have been introduced which give you extra goals to achieve by interacting with them in various ways. New goals based around characters and other things such as getting five stat points hidden each level ā“ which replace the money aspect of the game ā“ nestle between familiar targets such as high scores and collecting S-K-A-T-E.
Graphically the new expansive levels look very impressive with good texture work and good design. Levels now feel a lot more alive thanks to the introduction of more pedestrians and cars, which can be annoying if you run into them, but thatās all part of the challenge. Sadly there are a few instances of slowdown, but this does not impinge on the gameplay, it would just be very nice to have the frame rate locked at 60, as it is most of the time. Characters now look much more impressive sporting lots of new animation and details. There are also now lots of clothes and extras to dress up the twenty playable skaters with, as well as lots of boards to choose from which too can be customised with tape and wheels. Oh and if you donāt like the pro skaters you get given you can make your own via the fully featured character creation mode. Likewise you can do the same for the levels, although making a level to the same standard as those in game could take some time.
In the audio department things are good, the sound effects are as bone crunching and realistic as ever and the other characters in the game arenāt shy about talking to you. The music is a variety of punk and hip-hop, although there is the cool addition of Motorheadās Ace of Spades. If you donāt like any of the music you can of course use the Xbox had disc to play your own music, so that gets rid of any issues with the music. If you do own other consoles the music feature ā“ which we really like in Xbox games ā“ could perhaps be a deciding factor in which version to purchase.
Tony Hawk 3 is a top quality game, no questions about that, however what, if anything does the Xbox version offer the others. Well, not that much really, you get an extra level and character ā“ but is this really much of a bonus with both character and level creations tools in the game? The frame rate is a little smoother than the other versions ā“ but itās not really that noticeable. You can link up to four Xboxās together for some multi-television skating action, but you could do that with the PS2 version so thatās not really an extra. In all honesty it really does not matter that there are not that many extra things in the Xbox version because the game itself is so damn good, everything is finely honed and balanced and given that you can always see yourself getting a slightly higher score you always end up coming back to it.
