Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 Review

Stages are all very different from one another and it offers a lot of variety and different ways of linking your tricks. Some of the environments also have lots of interaction like you’ll often be seeing lots of people walking around or cars and there are destructable parts. You can sometimes grind a specific rail in a stage and you’ll unlock new areas like that. There are lots of secret areas and new places to pull off tricks and it’s amazing how much new stuff you can discover even when you thought you had already seen it all.

Of course there are a few other modes of play like trick attack, graffiti, smack!, horse and king of the hill. They offer various types of play for some quite fun multiplayer madness. One of those games is actually a game of tag where you have to run after the others and touch them to tag them and then run away. In another you perform tricks and when you do the floor where you pulled it off changes to your color and if someone performs a trick that’s worth more points it’ll change to his color and the goal is to have the more areas of your color as possible. Still, if you want to play multiplayer I think that just playing in the normal mode where you have to get the best score is where you’re gonna have the most fun. The other modes are great but they easily get boring after a few hours of play.

This game has a lot of editors. You can create your own custom skater and make him the size you want, give him the hair you want, change his face, glasses, clothing… there are a lots of items that you can use to make him as funny as you want or as cool as you want and you can then take him in carreer mode and play around and update his stats and moves.

The other editor that can be very fun if you are good at is is the skatepark editor. Here you get nearly everything the creators of the game had to make their levels so you can create your own custom ones. There are various ramps that you can use or rails and also all kinds of stuff like trees and even water and lava! I wasn’t really good at creating a skatepark that worked well but I know some people have crazy ideas and will spend lots of time on this.

For a game that was released at the beginning of the console’s life it still hold it’s own even today. The characters are well detailed and everything looks really crisp. the framerate is steady with no big noticable slowdowns even though there are a few from time to time, textures aren’t that blurry, in fact they look really good. Neversoft really knows how to make great looking games and I think it shows in this game. Animation is also top notch but I think that’s quite normal as the tricks are the most important aspect of a skateboarding game so they need to look good in motion. There wasn’t any mind blowing effects but I think that’s something to be espected, especially in a skateboarding game.

As usual we get a nice set of music for all people. There is some rock, punk, rap, everything people who play this game would want to listen to and you can even customize the play list to your liking. Sound effects still sound like past versions to me, maybe now they’re just in higher quality but I could not really tell as it seems mostly the same. The surround effect is there though and it’s quite nice.

You’ve got unlockable videos, unlockable characters, unlockable tricks; there are lots of reasons to keep playing this game for a long time. It was very well done and if you are into skateboarding then you need to get this game. Even I am not really into that sport and I still like it. Sure, it might seem more impressive in real life but it is still a great experience and one that is, in my opinion, worth the price of admission.