Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
Score: 40% ESRB: Teen Publisher: Activision Developer: Robomodo Media: Download/1 Players: 1; 2 - 20 (Online) Genre: Sports (Extreme)/ Online
Graphics & Sound: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 bears all the hallmarks of a game that was released for a single, solitary purpose: to die as quietly as possible. It’s a sad sack of a sequel, and not necessarily because it’s that bad of a game; it’s because it occasionally threatens to recapture that certain something that made the series great in its heyday. It doesn’t plumb the bottom of the barrel like Tony Hawk: RIDE did, but at the end of the day, this is an unfinished game that is worth maybe a tenth of its price. Technically and artistically, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 might have looked at home on the PlayStation 2; I say "might have," because it doesn’t even compare well to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 or 4. From a conceptual standpoint, this just isn’t an attractive game. Textures are flat and environments are uncharacteristically boring for the series. I’ll never call out the Tony Hawk series for taking scientific liberties with the laws of physics; I distinctly remember the moment in Underground in which the player acid drops off a hotel rooftop and launches over a helicopter only to land on the roof of another hotel. Realism just isn’t this franchise’s thing. But Pro Skater 5’s physics are indefensibly bad; again, not as bad as in RIDE, but as far as the core series goes, this one looks the worst. But the physics are linked to the gameplay, so I’ll save most of those complaints for later. Under the hood, technical problems abound in Pro Skater 5. It doesn’t take long to notice; even taking the insanely huge day one patch into account. The audio drops out several times in the Activision logo sequence, and that’s indicative of the full experience. A poorly-designed user interface and unwelcome, intermittent load times round out the dubious package. Sound design is usually a large part of what ties the Tony Hawk games to the skater culture to which they are dedicated. All of it, from the simple sounds of polyurethane wheels making continuous contact with wood and asphalt to the diverse soundtrack, helps make a Tony Hawk game… well, a Tony Hawk game. In this regard, the game mostly succeeds, save for the myriad technical problems that invariably get in the way. The soundtrack is a blend of punk rock, metal, and hip hop that’s right at home for the series and the sport it represents.
Gameplay: From the franchise’s inception to its current sorry state, there’s always been a core to the gameplay structure. Each level acts as a sort of hub, where you, as one of several professional skaters (or those of your own making) explore, in search of collectibles, challenges, gaps, and secrets. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 drops the ball with perhaps the weakest series of levels and challenges we’ve yet seen in the series (again, not counting RIDE). Eight levels. That’s all you’re getting out of Pro Skater 5. And sadly, there’s very little creativity or attractiveness to be seen. Worse, none of the levels play to the game’s precious few strengths. When the game attempts to bring you back to the franchise’s glory days, you won’t be tempted to wax nostalgic; when you unceremoniously pull off the famous Leap of Faith in School III, you’ll instead be tempted to dust off your PlayStation and pop in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, a superior game in almost every way. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5’s design philosophy is loaded with cracks, none more threatening to its structural integrity than its always-online approach. You can press the button corresponding to "Start a Private Game" as hard as you want, but once you start actually getting into the meat of the experience, you’ll find your game invaded by other skaters. I understand what Robomodo was hoping for; social interaction is a huge part of the current generation of gaming. But it feels shoehorned in; literally everyone I’ve run into has kept to themselves, forgoing each contrived skate party in favor of completing objectives on their own. And I felt the same way throughout. So while the online component deserves a mention for being idealistic, it isn’t implemented well at all. So whether you’re a party animal or a lone wolf, you’ll be doing much the same thing. Each level has a series of objectives, and these are designed very similarly to those in previous games in the series. You’ll still be collecting S, K, A, T, and E, going to the hidden DVDs and VHS tapes, tricking through the line drawn out by C, O, M, B, and O, and taking down level-specific challenges. Challenge structure seems expressly designed to pad out the game, an objective that is admittedly achieved with aplomb. Most of them follow a pattern and are repeated throughout each of the game’s eight levels; these generally have to do with either achieving a high score or performing well in a particular style of skating. Others are… well, bizarre. Take, for example, the one that has you frantically performing tricks to stop your head from swelling up like a balloon. Go too long without scoring, and your head explodes. Okay…
Difficulty: Uneven. That’s the word I would use to describe Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5’s difficulty level. While the levels’ exploration challenges feature a reasonable climb in difficulty level the further in you go, the individual performance-related challenges are a different story. You’ll be able to complete each of them with no problem if you’re a veteran of the series, but if you’re going for the "Sick" score for each of them, you’re going to have a rough time with some of these.
Game Mechanics: Skateboarding, as a sport, naturally lends itself extremely well to video gaming; each particular trick type is mapped to a particular button, and when you combine this with the different ways you can spin and flip your skater in midair, the combo possibilities are endless. So between flips, grabs, grinds, and manuals, you’ll never run out of ways to string tricks together. I remember playing Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland and wondering how far the developers were willing to go in terms of new gameplay mechanics; with the introduction of parkour, combos could essentially be lengthened to the point of near-eternity. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 cuts out just about everything that was added after Pro Skater 3 and adds one new mechanic. Unfortunately, it’s an absolutely terrible one. Grinding is an important part of combo building in this series, and its implementation is nearly ruined by the introduction of the slam mechanic, which shares the same button. Now, when you press the grind button in midair, your skater somehow crashes straight down with incredible force. No longer can you prepare and position yourself as you approach each rail or edge while holding the button down; when you press it, you’d better be directly above a grindable edge, or your combo will probably end prematurely. It’s a poorly-conceived mechanic that is poorly-implemented. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 is a completionist’s nightmare; it’s a bad game that forces you to play it to completion several times if you want to 100% it; all the stat points you earn from leveling up can only go to the skater you’ve been playing with; since the game has very little inherent replay value, most people will give up on it before seeing absolutely everything there is to see. And while the customization options are welcome, the core game isn’t enjoyable enough to spend any significant amount of time with them. This includes the level editor, which is functional but ultimately superfluous. The Tony Hawk franchise has been on life support for years, and if Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 tells us anything, it’s that it’s time to pull the plug. The Birdman had a great run for the most part, and recent efforts have unfortunately defiled the franchise’s legacy. This is probably the last Tony Hawk game we’ll ever see; if this is the case, it's a shame it had to end on such a bitter note.
-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications AKA Jon Carlos
Related Links: Official Website of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 Game Vortex's Tony Hawk Coverage
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