tony hawk pro skater review
Today, no confetti, champagne and cries of joy: we are going to talk about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. A sequel that we did not really expect and which nevertheless managed to spark a certain enthusiasm among the fans from the first hour. The craze that quickly faded after the first images and videos. Destroyed by players on all social networks, mocked by the press, THPS 5 thought to get a makeover with the adoption of cel shading and more funky colors. I can tell you that the only thing that will be "funky" in this test is the list of pluses and minuses, in conclusion.
When you were a teenager in the 90s, it was hard to miss the Tony Hawk phenomenon. Man was everywhere, on TV, in video games, and especially the first two Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which almost all gamers of the 90s must have owned at one time or another. The title offered a very arcade but fairly deep gameplay, a completely offbeat skate / punk atmosphere, and above all large "skatable" areas full of secrets and missions more stupid than each other. It was a game of dirty kids, for dirty kids, a time when placing a kickflip above the head of a cop was still possible ... Finally, in the game, of course.
But times have changed, Neversoft, the happy dads of the franchise are no longer and today, the title is still in the hands of Activision and especially Robomodo (seconded by Disruptive Games), a studio proud to assert on his website that he is a specialist in awesome games ("we specialize in awesome games", in the language of George W. Bush). If the mention makes you tick like me when I connected to robomodo.com, you will probably have the idea to go check the CV of the said studio. Don't move, these are their latest productions: there are mobile games, such as Monster Flash and Globber's Escape, or Hunger Games: Catching Fire Panem Run, a runner inspired by the famous film series, and a few skate games, like. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, Skateboard Slam, and Tony Hawk: Shred and Tony Hawk: Ride. Sorry to waste so much time describing you Robomodo but this little list should help you understand one of the problems that presents Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Robomodo is clearly not a specialist in quality games and it is not this THPS 5 which will cover their curriculum with gold leaf.
WHEEL LAIDER
So you've probably seen it before, and personally it's probably one of my biggest laughs in recent months. THPS 5 shouldn't have looked like it did today, originally. The developers had left on a “realistic” visual rendering, so close to what the Pro Skater had offered so far. They wanted to show their work, and everyone on the internet was very mean to them. So they figured that changing the look of their game at the last minute might be a good idea, and ... this is the result. The game was hidden behind a badly done, badly finished cel shading and simply unbearable to undergo even 15 minutes or more. The characters, poorly textured and poorly animated, live in half-ugly, half-cel shading, and half-ugly environments behind. This artistic direction makes no sense, and again, I'm not talking about the hyper-flashy light effects when you activate your Super, which will remind you of the best of the worst free-to-play games existing on Android and iOS.And if it was only a question of taste ... But no, because even technically speaking, the game is next to the plate: clipping, aliasing, and especially textures that pop at the last moment, either in the character selection screen, or directly in the cards, where graffiti appears on the walls when you get close to it. For a 2003 game, that would be pretty good ... But we are in 2015, on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. I hardly dare think of the 360 / PS3 versions.
LIKE HOME, AFTER AN EARTHQUAKE
Yet controller in hand, we would almost want to pretend that the game was not so ugly, and simply roll, jump, and swing some figures. With my hundreds of hours on the first Pro Skater, and especially the good times spent on American Wasteland, I felt like at home. Jump, flip, grab, grind, manual, revert ... Everything comes back extremely quickly and it is with a smile that we will find the letters SKATE and COMBO on the first card. The reflexes come back quickly and we take a little pleasure (let's face it) to try big combos, chaining grab, ollie and kickflip, without forgetting to link everything with moult slide, manual and revert so as not to lose the precious multiplier. Slight disappointment all the same: some contributions from more recent episodes have disappeared, I am thinking in particular of the possibility of getting off your skateboard for a walk, or the famous "sticker slap" by American Wasteland which were very useful for getting out of the big one combo.All this would be almost perfect if the different cards in the game had not been drawn with the feet. Not content with being tiny, the cards of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 are filled with slide bars, springboards, pools, and so on, but nothing makes sense. It almost feels like playing at levels created by beginners, well. Remember the first Tony Hawks, remember London, Alcatraz, New York, or even Marseille! The maps weren't just big, they were drawn with intelligence and filled with hiding places, secret gaps and stupid little things that made us eager to go to the next level to discover more. The little guys from Neversoft obviously had a passive dirty joking kids and it felt in the game, irreverent, gladly pee-poo, but always fun.
In short, we arrive in familiar territory but it is like finding our apartment after a burglary: we are at home, but the places are unrecognizable and above all, lots of things we wanted to have disappeared.
NOTHING INTERESTING TO DO
It is also when we tackle the different tests of the game that we understand how the members of Robomodo did not understand the spirit of "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater". They tried to create some fun, second degree tests, but it was a total failure. First of all because it's not really fun (“ahah, my head swells, how funny it is, too bad it hides the whole screen!” Or “I'm a big rebel, I'm going to go pick up marshmallows and bring them back to the campfire, when my mom doesn't want it, ohoho ”) and then because you have the impression of being taken for an idiot. This is especially true when one is supposed to pass through circles of light or destroy objects before the time limit: the game constantly tells us the direction to follow. Something that did not exist before, the difficulty being precisely to find the circles / objects before the time limit. Hence the pleasure of finding them all, on time. Too bad for the challenge.Well we can always go get the few VHS / DVDs that hang around here and there but they are not even hidden; or look for the few gaps in each card, but honestly, it's not worth it. Remains the level editor, rather well thought out and fairly complete, but we are still trying to understand the interest: why play a game so ugly and so uninteresting, from a gameplay point of view?
BUGS FACTORY
You have no doubt seen the videos dedicated to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 flourish on the web. A common denominator: all these videos have been edited to highlight the first problem of the game, the number of bugs it contains. Indeed, since the physical engine of the title is regularly plunged into a vegetative coma, we regularly witness quite mind-blowing scenes. Without really knowing why, your skater will soar in the air, in slow motion, before going to crash several tens of meters away, soft like a shellfish forgotten at the bottom of a poorly cleaned sink. The game crashes regularly, forcing you to return to the main menu, and obviously matchmaking is unable to find you opponents. In about ten hours, I did not manage to get any game buddy, whether in Trick Attack, King of the Hill, or any fact, in fact.The notes
+ Positive points
Correct level editor
Soundtrack in the spirit of the series
Without doubt the last Tony Hawk game from the Activision / Robomodo duo
-Negative points
Ugly
The impression that the game is trying to coax us with some codes from the series, without fulfilling the minimum contract
Agony physics engine
Terminal matchmaking
Ridiculous modeling of different characters
Small, poorly drawn cards
Missions that try to be funny, and that crash every time
Playing on the nostalgia chord to try to stir up old gamers, this is very naughty. This Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a real disaster and it is not his level editor who will manage to save it: in the state, nothing justifies that we spend even a euro to get it procure. Bugs in every way, ridiculous and uninspired maps, graphics to vomit, it is not with a few gaps and letters SKATE that the game will tip your heart to skate. Luckily, it seems that the contract between Tony Hawk and Activision will end next December, and if this game was probably developed in a hurry to take advantage for the last time of the prestigious aura of Antoine Faucon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 will probably be the last in the family. This is probably the only positive point of this game, to tell the truth.
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