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Review: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner Review Computer: 867MHz G4, 640MB RAM, ATI RADEON 8500, Mac OS X v10.2.8 Review Date: September 29, 2003
My neighbors' kids are skateboarders. In fact, they're doing it right now in the parking lot of the newly renovated business complex across from my house. The kids aren't that great, I don't think, but they're young, so I doubt it'll be long before they're either winning gold medals in the X-Games or until I'm filming them splitting their heads open and selling the video for $10,000 to that You Gotta See This Show I sometimes see at Outback Steakhouse. I've split my head open skateboarding a few times myself, but I don't think the TV channels will pay $10,000 for a screen capture of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Too bad, too, as that's pretty much the only thing that would make this game worthwhile. I don't understand the appeal of skateboarding sims. None of us here at Applelinks do, which is why half our staff calls in sick on the day when our review unit is due to arrive. Bill Stiteler is only now talking to me again after I'd asked him to review Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and when I went to Erica Marceau with it, she covered her ears and sang, "La la la la la la la I can't hear you la la la," for fifteen minutes straight...without taking a breath!
It's not that it's a bad game, but that—as Bill pointed out in his review of Pro Skater 3—it's not really a game at all. You skate around and you perform tricks. The better you get, the more impressive the tricks. Oh, sure there are some objectives you need to complete, but my dad used to give me objectives when I was ordered to clean out the garage. That didn't make it a game. That being said, the developers did manage to cram in a bunch elements in an attempt to make it interesting. You can skate as any of fourteen professional skaters. You can also create your own skater and customize his shirt pants, haircut, etc. You can even have him skate in his skivvies! I wonder why that feature isn't bulleted on the box. Choosing to put something worthwhile in, as well, Neversoft has revamped the career mode. You're no longer under a timer, for the most part, as your tasks are given to you by people on the street. Accept their assignment, and you'll then be given your time limit. If you know you're not going to make it, you can bail early or even restart. You're not punished if you do so, you just skate around until you're ready to try again or until you accept a different task. Some of the tasks given to you are fairly inventive, as are some of the mini-games you'll encounter along the way. I suppose these are a good break from simply skating around, but I never played the game long enough in one sitting to need a break from simply skating around.
This time around, the manual includes a bit of information on how to improve some tricks. Most of these are the building blocks for what is to come, and are therefore fairly simple to pull off after ten to fifteen minutes of free skating and plenty of falling down. As you progress, though, the combinations become much harder to figure out and execute, but you'll need them to get the big points in the later challenges. The levels are somewhat clever, I suppose. I didn't play Pro Skater 3, so I'm not sure what the levels were like there, but I recall the ones in Pro Skater 2 being fairly flat. I mean, yes, there were ramps and guardrails and pedestrians to jump on, but that's about it. Here, some of the levels have multiple layers or floors, providing a much more open skating experience. It can be intimidating at first, as it take much more time to master these levels. On the other hand, there are many more objects on which you can perform your tricks...and even I have to admit it's pretty cool to perform flip tricks off the second storey roof of a building. As with previous versions, if you're not happy with the levels provided, you can build your own. Share them with friends! You can skate with others, too, as the multiplayer component allows for up to eight skaters to compete in variations of the traditional King of the Hill and Horse games, along with six others such as Trick Attack, Free Skate, and the new Score Challenge and Combo Mambo. It's in these multiplayer games that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 really gets interesting, provided you're good enough. The game's all about showing off, after all.
So, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 is a well made game, it just serves no purpose. There's not enough game in here to make it interesting for those even slightly outside its strict target audience, and there's not enough new abilities in here to make it interesting for many who already own THPS2 or 3. I feel like this game's some kind of inside joke I don't get, and no one on the inside wants to explain it to me. Regardless, for skateboarding fans, an afternoon at the local skate park watching the talent is more fun than playing this game. And there, you have the potential of watching some kid wipe out, which is always a good time. Take your camcorder, remember. People will happily pay good money to watch the misfortune of others.  [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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So, me. Fair enough. I have no bias against skateboarders, and I even marginally enjoyed 
Of course, in career mode, you can win money and points that allow you to improve your skills and equipment. The best way to beef up your skills, though, is to master the fundamentals in free skate and single session modes. Free skate is just that; do whatever you want for as long as you want. Single session gives you a brief period of time in which you try to rack up as many points as possible. The more impressive the trick, the higher the points. As you progress through career mode, you'll unlock levels that can be skated in either free skate or single session mode.
Graphically, Pro Skater 4 looks pretty good, although perhaps not good enough to justify the jump in system requirements. Musically...well, this is tricky. The game's crammed full of heavy metal, rap, and frat rock from bands you actually know (AC/DC, N.W.A., System of a Down, etc.), but I'd personally like to see a higher ratio of ska and punk in here...some Dancehall Crashers, Reel Big Fish, Dead Milkmen and the like. That's a matter of personal taste, though, and I'm sure the developers studied their demographic well when choosing the music. As for ambient noises, they're fine. You mainly only hear the sounds of your wheels on concrete, but there are the occasional squeals of car tires, swells of crowd noise as you skate past certain buildings, etc.