You know, living as a socially isolated kid who doesn't go out to play with the other kids, I was a pretty reserved tyke. Fast-forward to two decades, I'm less reserved, but I do like my socially isolated time playing skating games, and it has finally come back to that.
This franchise has been buried so hard because of how badly they fumbled getting the games right for current generation. Also, maybe this is a controversial opinion, but I think Underground 2 is one of the all-time goods. It started to fumble after American Wasteland and go absolutely the way of servicing gimmicky accessories, because Kinect, Wii, Guitar Hero got too popular.
But today, in a more minimalistic future, Tony Hawk's makes it return by simple being good as the original games did. Bringing old tracks, revamping the gameplay to be smoother, work up the visual appeal, and maybe update the song license, Et voilà, perfection 👌.
- Spin, flip, grind, drop, and revert
If you're going to play a skating game, you have to give it your all and learn from your failures, a lot. Or you could just do what I did halfway and just take advices from the internet. Funny thing, I didn't have to because the information is all there. The learning curve is still steep.
This game is a return to form in the sense that the devs knows skateboarding is super hard, and takes so much practice to learn from. The playgrounds have layers, hidden areas, out of reach players you need to pull some trick into navigating and getting into. You can learn all the tricks you want to keep that score up, if you can't get to those places, you'll never hit the goals.
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Pick your skater, with variable playstyles and stats. I can't exactly remember what the older games offered, so I'm going to just assume they added way more to the roster with newer modes, challenges, and of course, a sick playlist of licensed music.
The tutorial does its job of helping you familiarize with the button tricks, like jumping and doing an Ollie, holding jump accelerates movement, and X for flips, Y for grinds, B for grabs. Pulling successful trick combos increases the special meter, which increases score and allows me to trick out better combos for more score, but also riskier as crashing will reset it.
Turns out, there's also special tricks, the problem is that as much the tutorial taught me all the moves, not everything is a given which I realized after getting into the Canada track. Heck, even I have a hard time staying on the nosedive, what gives? Alright, I'll just settle for throwing foreman's into the coolant water, getting someone's tongue unstuck on frozen trees, burying a bully under snow and then some. Not railing on fences and then falling into the water.
That's pretty much the game, it's almost like button smashing, you're given the fundamentals, go crazy and figure the rest out. Each playground has all these set to get the player to learn the area before working with the tricks, and well, going around finding treasure.
Like secret tapes, which kind of pisses me off that I haven't gotten one, and I just put several hours into the game already. Damn you, where's my 14-year-old self again? He knows how to figure this stuff out, damn I'm too old for this. Not all playgrounds are available, I have to unlock by meeting around 5-6 goals least. This includes astronomically high scoreboards under 2 minute time.
- What the hell is a flipside double cheeseburger strap 360 warp?
Forgive me, my skateboarding lingo is nonexistent, I look at whatever moves I pull and all the stuff I'm pressing around, and yet I still can't comprehend it. Hell, it's more complex than that, you fly off and press the jump too late, and then pull tricks, you'll crash. Pull a triple grab while not being longer in air, crash. Learning through failure is a big thing.
There are so many ways to earn score, until your thumbs start hurting, and you're getting the blisters in there. I also love that there's split screen, though I'll need to find a friend, clean my house and a second controller before he plays with me, and his short attention span gives up.
By the by, protip: if you're pulling insane combos for higher score, do the revert each time you land after flying off the ramp. Also, I learned to avoid the fall without ramp contact by pressing RT as a switch, nice. Like, it's not so hard after all, except I still didn't learn the special tricks.
You win some, lose some. This installment is loaded with maps from 3 and 4, all remastered, looking visually to date, and I say that because it's a UE4 game, and it manages to run well too. Also, my bad for not playing this sooner, was super busy with Death Stranding 2. Getting ready for the better days, and mastering the art of skateboarding Jujitsu. Cheers ✌️.
Above screenshots and GIFs are from personal recordings only
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