#3 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Game Info

Publisher: Activision

Developer: Neversoft Entertainment

Platform:  PS2

Genre(s): Sports, Action

Players: 2

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Release Date: October 30, 2001

Intro:

While Ace of Spades plays, 13 professional skaters perform stunning skating feats and, really, who doesn't want to try that out?  The intro is very effective at drawing the player in and giving them a small taste of the gameplay that might be coming.  Mostly, however, it's just a tasty visual, a movie.  It's still a fun one. 

Getting Going:

I started with creating a skater, because, why not?  There were a ton of options to choose from: male and female, clothes, hair style, facial hair, shoes and socks, skate decks and player stats.  Every option short of actually facial features seemed to be available.  Let's face it, the ability to customize the player character is always a good way to grab the player in the beginning.  If I hadn't wanted to play a customized character, though, I had a choice of 13 pros, each with their own stats and boards.  I moved on to the tutorial, as I'm a complete Noob when it comes to skate games. Well, I'm a Noob when it comes to all sports games.  There, I've said it! 

As a complete beginner, the first thing I noticed about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is that it seems to assume you've played the other two.  Either that, or it assumes you know a little bit about skateboarding.  On both accounts, I fail.  It would have been nice to see a demonstration, or at least a description, of the various moves.  Instead, I was simply told "to do a wall ride, skate up to the wall and press triangle".  What's a wall ride?  What's a manual?  I understood the basics, but I remembered thinking "I'll never remember all of these controls".  Still, I play Tekken.  Eventually, you learn the moves.  No big.  In the meantime, though, I left a lot of blood on the concrete.  I have to admit, that was pretty cool.  Everywhere that you leave blood in the level, it stays.  So as you skate around, you can see everywhere you biffed.  And your biffs are glorious.  Truly.  The animations for the wipeouts are varied and cool.  I think I might have even seen my teeth flying!  When it was time to finally get into the game, I reached the foundry level.  I had more success here than in the tutorial at landing things.  The foundry is actually very graphically enticing.  You can grind, jump and trick off of every surface.  The movement of the skater is smooth and there is a lot to do here.

Fun:

At first, the game wasn't very fun.  I'm not gonna lie.  It probably wasn't the game's fault, though.  It's not fun when you aren't any good.  I don't know if the game ever really became fun for me, however.  I researched the game and then went back in and played a second time.  The second time through was more satisfying.  I was able to get some of the goals and rack up some prettygood points.  I was unsure of what I needed to do sometimes, however.  That was annoying.  Still, the fact that this game had so much to offer in the way of unlimited surfaces and numerous unlockables was tempting.

Visuals:

As already stated, the Foundry level is graphically enticing.  The Canada level wasn't as pretty.  It seems it is easier to render metal than nature.  At a blistering 60 fps framerate, however, the graphics were smooth and there were few places in which I seemed to jump through a wall rather than onto it.  The player character has a lot of visual options which do show up in the game.  You can unlock new decks and change your board.  Customize-able characters have many clothing options to choose from. The tricks do look amazing when performed.

Sound: 

Music does a fantastic job of creating pacing in a game and Neversoft seems to understand this.  The soundtrack to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is outstanding!  And, occasionally, the player is treated to a comment or two from the bystanders.  Mostly, though, it's just the music that gets you going.

Intelligence:
I can't say that the NPC's seemed to notice me or care.  They made comments here and there, especially if I ran them over, but mostly, they just stood in one place pretending to do whatever it was they were doing.

Immersion:
Is it an immersive game?  No.  The game is fast-paced and, in career mode, timed.  Time doesn't fly by because you keep running out of it and doing tasks.  You will have a running dialog in your head of things you need to do or how to go about completing a specific task, but I didn't find myself lost in the game at all.  When you complete a task, a pop-up lets you know and some of them even stop the action.  This is great for the completion aspect, but it reminds you that you are, indeed, playing a game.

Cameras:
The transitions were smooth.  Movement through the game is smooth and fluent.  There weren't any camera angle options that I noted, but I was able to see anything I wanted to see from a wide enough view to affect my play. That seemed all that was important.

Controls:
There are a lot of them.  There's a lot to know in this game and a lot to do.  Every skater has his own set of tricks and skills.  The skaters move smoothly on the boards.  I was often frustrated with the constant movement, however and there were times I wanted the PC to go the other way, but he seemed determined to stay on the path he was on. Sometimes, it wouldn't have taken anything to change direction.  He wasn't on a ramp or incline.   In spite of this, the physics of the game seemed very realistic.

Ideas:
I learned from playing this that I would make tutorials more intuitive.  You really have to treat every player as if they are new to a game or genre.  This could frustrate people who aren't new, so there should be some separation in the tutorials for true beginners and for players who want to get playing. I would also like to see some videos in the game that give the player an idea of what they're trying to accomplish.

Memory:
I was a bit disappointed in this game overall.  It comes in at the #3 spot in a list of the top 100 games on 3 systems.  I simply couldn't figure out why.  I went to read the numerous top reviews of it and overwhelmingly they all said the same thing: the game has a crazy cool framerate and an exceptional soundtrack.  It was also repeatedly compared to the previous two entries in the franchise.  Is this all it takes to make a top-rated game?