This game is a piece of shit...

[AJ_Radio]

Early last year I wanted to play a game that would give me a bit of nostalgia. I played several Sega Genesis titles, mostly bare bones with no real bonus features or anything fancy, but were acceptable because they were the originals properly ported over. So I had no problem with them.

 

Wanting a fix of the old Tony Hawk games I loved so much as a kid in the fifth and sixth grade, I decided to buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, since it had well, both THPS 1 and THPS 2 levels. I however didn't actually play it until last Fall, due to a massive backlog I was accumulating which resulting in me not playing it right away.

 

My first impressions were bad. I played a little of Warehouse, a level anyone familiar with THPS 1 should be at home with. I sucked real bad. Maybe it had to do with many years of not playing a single Tony Hawk game, or I was just not used to the game mechanics like I used to be all those years ago. I unlocked one trophy, but put it off until I had a fellow PSNPROFILES member boost the online trophy with me. Once I had that done I decided to play other games.

 

I came back to this game early Sunday morning, and while I've made a good bit of progress, it is frustrating as all hell.

 

The controls are poor. They feel way too floaty, which I don't remember being the case with THPS 1, 2 and Underground. Neversoft used a different engine, Robomodo decided to put the Unreal Engine in, which made for different feel of the moves and combos. On countless occasions I simply felt like I was executing a Kickflip, but the game did not recognize it and thus did not perform it even though I put in the input on my PS3 controller. Many wall rides resulted in my character suddenly bailing, flying off the wall and spraying blood everywhere like some Transformer threw him across the map. A flip sometimes had him being launched 100 feet in the air as a ragdoll. To further add to the Kickflip problem, manuals don't always work as they should and transfers are difficult to pull off. This made obtaining the 500,000 points in Venice extremely frustrating, and I'm currently two hours in trying to unlock Officer Dick, which I need a 400,000 score (Sick Score) in Marseilles. The physics feel so off and broken I feel like this game is going against me, sometimes giving me a fair chance and other times giving me the middle finger. Balancing in this game is complete shit, you have to be absolutely perfect if you have any hope of pulling giant combos without bailing, which happens to me 90 - 95 percent of the time.

 

The worst thing of all is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD feels empty. A number of levels from THPS 1 and 2 were cut, which upset me as I thought before buying I was going to re experience playing through them. There is no character customization, no creating levels, none of the good features that helped make the old Tony Hawk games memorable. There is Big Head Survival, which I'm not a fan of and Hawkman, which isn't all that great. This game is merely a shell. It tries to recreate the old games but the efforts and intentions are lazy. Activision and Robomodo basically said to hell with this series. After hearing the absolutely bad reviews on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, I'm not surprised.

 

I had to turn off the music after a few hours. Every time I play this game now I have to turn off the music and listen to my own, or watch a Youtube video. Reason being is there's a very small selection of songs. Tony Hawk's Underground 1 had far more music and it was actually decent. I discovered certain bands and artists whom I would later appreciate that were in the early games. But here in this crappy remake,  there's literally no less than 4 to 6 songs and you'll literally hear the same song 10 - 15 minutes later. I very rarely turn off video game music unless it is horrendously bad. Here they play songs from real life artists which is what Grand Theft Auto does. Only they play them to death until you absolutely have to turn it off. Would it of been much to put more music in this game? So damn lazy.

 

Poor physics, poor controls, numerous bugs and glitches, poor music selection, just bad in a lot of categories. Right now I feel like I would rather buy Tony Hawk on the N64 and play that instead of slogging my way through this garbage. The trophies are more difficult than they should be due to the mechanics. I intend to get all of them for the platinum, but I won't be enjoying myself while doing so. A shame. The money I spent on this game was wasted, and this will be the last time I buy a Tony Hawk game by Robomodo. Shame on you for putting this garbage out claiming it to be like the magic of the old Tony Hawk games.

 

What a joke.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Spaz

[Cobby]

It's an old Activision game of course it's crap

[AJ_Radio]

3 minutes ago, Humongous Chungus said:

It's an old Activision game of course it's crap

 

The game came out five years ago so I guess it's old.

 

Unbelievable how terrible of a company they are. They have done a lot more than just Tony Hawk, but I'll spare the details since you probably know all of them.

 

 

[DF007gamer]

10 minutes ago, Spaz said:

 

The game came out five years ago so I guess it's old.

 

Unbelievable how terrible of a company they are. They have done a lot more than just Tony Hawk, but I'll spare the details since you probably know all of them.

 

 

 

I've made this mistake too many times. Wanting to back to the classics just to realize that the game hasn't aged well. Back then we weren't really worried about graphics and glitches and just pushed through it. It might have been good then. The same goes with movies.

[soniq]

Have you played the original on PS1 recently? The HD remake feels the same to me, which is also the biggest problem. They should have updated the controls of the game too, not just the graphics.

[AJ_Radio]

20 minutes ago, soniq said:

Have you played the original on PS1 recently? The HD remake feels the same to me, which is also the biggest problem. They should have updated the controls of the game too, not just the graphics.

 

No, just the N64 version. It's been a long time since I played that though.

 

I don't recall having this much trouble in the earlier games. I did all of Tony Hawk's Underground, played through the story and enjoyed it. One critical difference is this HD remake added in 'difficult' challenges which are the Projectives. I only need that 400,000 score from Marseilles and I will unlock that mode.

 

Still, it's a crappy game. Maybe THPS 1 was the same in a number of ways, but that game is much older whereas this game is five years old. It feels barebones compared to other games, EA Sports titles are the closest contender. It's frustrating neither Activision or Robomodo bothered to do much of anything other than to release a game for a newer system for the old fans of the Tony Hawk franchise.

 

I've had countless cheap failed attempts in pulling combos. The only real good thing about this game, apart from the improved graphics, is you can reload your attempts very quickly. Funny enough I had an easier time getting all the pellets in one combo in the Hangar than reaching 500,000 points in Venice. Now I'm struggling with 400,000 points in Marseilles because pulling off manuals and doing transfers (rail to vertical, etc) don't work as they should. So I have to be lucky. I've reached over 250,000 points in one combo on several tries but always manage to botch it up by attempting a 100,000 - 150,000 + combo.

[Katt]

Unreal Engine is not for Tony Hawk's games.

Besides, RoboModo, what else you can expect? an indie dev.

 

Here, I'll leave this for you.

 

But don't be too harsh with the poor thing, I enjoyed it (a little) thanks to the nostalgia factor.

 

EDIT: THPS died for me after the fourth game.

I know there is some other games without number that did pretty well in sales, but I just can't stand all the new additions.

At least this one maintained that. A classic THPS game. A crappy but classic experience.

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by Chunchunmaru

[AJ_Radio]

I never once expected Robomodo to do anything Neversoft did 15 - 20 years ago. I just didn't expect this game to be as bad with the controls and executions as it actually is.

[Super-Fly Spider-Guy]

I don't have the time or desire to get into this right now, but trust me, if anyone would get into it, it would be me. And I maybe will in a day or two when I have time, but until then, this.

 

I played Tony Hawk 5 today again, this time on Xbox One because it was 10 dollars on disc and I impulse buy everything. It's not a bad game, it's just fucking lazy as shit, poorly put together, and inferior to a 15 year old version of itself. It's not bad though, it's just worse. It should have been much more than it was. And, as above, I may get into this further later.

 

Tony Hawk HD is very similar to Tony Hawk 5, but it's missing a few different things, and oddly looks a little prettier, at least to me. For the most part, they do feel very much the same game though. I haven't played THPS HD in a while, not ages, but probably a couple months, and while I can enjoy it, it's nowhere near the originals.

 

I will regularly replay the original 4 all the time to this day. Literally every month, there will be a couple of hours sunk in. On my phone to TAFE or on the tele with the missus, no matter what, I can't go a couple of weeks without at least playing a few rounds of old school THPS. In addition to that, I've plat'd THPS 5 four or five times, and same goes for THPS HD, so I'm pretty fucking familiar with the series. And while I (kind of force myself to) have a small portion of love for the 2 Robomodo Pro Skater entries, there is no denying, whatsoever, that

 

IT FEELS NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THE ORIGINAL TITLES IN THE SERIES.

 

When I have the time, I may expand on this and defend the new ones (THPS 5 only really, HD was a missed opportunity, but 5 was a missed opportunity with a few salvageable bits at least) but right now, I'm mostly here to say "I've played the living shit out of all the games, and anyone who says the new ones feel like the old ones is lying, or misinformed, and the new ones pale in comparison, no ifs ands or buts"

[AJ_Radio]

7 minutes ago, Super-Fly Spider-Guy said:

I don't have the time or desire to get into this right now, but trust me, if anyone would get into it, it would be me. And I maybe will in a day or two when I have time, but until then, this.

 

I played Tony Hawk 5 today again, this time on Xbox One because it was 10 dollars on disc and I impulse buy everything. It's not a bad game, it's just fucking lazy as shit, poorly put together, and inferior to a 15 year old version of itself. It's not bad though, it's just worse. It should have been much more than it was. And, as above, I may get into this further later.

 

Tony Hawk HD is very similar to Tony Hawk 5, but it's missing a few different things, and oddly looks a little prettier, at least to me. For the most part, they do feel very much the same game though. I haven't played THPS HD in a while, not ages, but probably a couple months, and while I can enjoy it, it's nowhere near the originals.

 

I will regularly replay the original 4 all the time to this day. Literally every month, there will be a couple of hours sunk in. On my phone to TAFE or on the tele with the missus, no matter what, I can't go a couple of weeks without at least playing a few rounds of old school THPS. In addition to that, I've plat'd THPS 5 four or five times, and same goes for THPS HD, so I'm pretty fucking familiar with the series. And while I (kind of force myself to) have a small portion of love for the 2 Robomodo Pro Skater entries, there is no denying, whatsoever, that

 

IT FEELS NOTHING AT ALL LIKE THE ORIGINAL TITLES IN THE SERIES.

 

When I have the time, I may expand on this and defend the new ones (THPS 5 only really, HD was a missed opportunity, but 5 was a missed opportunity with a few salvageable bits at least) but right now, I'm mostly here to say "I've played the living shit out of all the games, and anyone who says the new ones feel like the old ones is lying, or misinformed, and the new ones pale in comparison, no ifs ands or buts"

 

I'm just going to post this here. Thanks for boosting that trophy for me several months back. I definitely appreciated the help.

 

But since I only played a few minutes of this game up until Sunday morning, I didn't know the game mechanics all too well.

 

Maybe my memory is failing me, or I just didn't feel the itch for the controls since it's literally been several years since I played any Tony Hawk game. A long time back I thought about purchasing the other Hawk titles, but since they have online trophies that are no longer obtainable, I didn't bother.

 

While I understood that these games have a high difficulty curve (regardless of what game you played or started with), I felt if I pushed through them my patience would reward myself. I've played no less than four Tony Hawk games prior to this one, I haven't exactly played all of them and while I'm far from a truly great player (I'm pretty average at best), I knew what to expect.

 

For very experienced players, even with all the flaws and glitches this game has the obstacles aren't too much of an issue. For me they are an issue because I'm simply not that good, and it's one of those games where to to real good at it, you have to learn it like you would in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I'm absolutely terrible at those types of games. Tony Hawk isn't that kind of difficulty, it's easier than that, my disappointment is the difficulty I'm experiencing is from the shortcomings of this remake, mostly due to the Unreal Engine not being the best design for this kind of gameplay. I can pull 200,000+ combos and whatnot, but when the shortcomings make the game more difficult as far as making progress, it irritates me. Maybe Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is the same story. I don't know.

 

I don't have the experience and probably not the skills as you do with Hawk games, I'm just sorely disappointed with the game. I posted this topic purely to vent my frustration with it, it's perfectly fine if you disagree with it. I loved Tony Hawk when I was growing up, even watched him at a few X Games back in the day. Nostalgia isn't always good, I guess in this case I was fooled into thinking this was going to be a throwback to the old games, with a few touches added to it. There is still a little bit of nostalgia though, but that wore off for me after a few hours.