Gaming Target - GameCube: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Written by Chris Reiter on November 20, 2002

Full Review: Pass the peace pipe so I can skate all over it!

The Hawkster is back, and he's higher than ever (in the air that is, you sick minded individual)! Four years and without a loss of inertia -- in fact, it's a speed that builds itself up every time -- the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater franchise continues to dominate the skating arena of video games, and I can never see why there's such a reason as to why not. Teamed with Activision, Neversoft, the development group behind Tony's leap into digital bliss, has proved their worth of existence. Now with more of what's new mixed in the area of old, the king of the skating ring is here and there and everywhere for global domination of your every waking minute of leisurely enjoyment.

This year, as for every year, Neversoft offers more features and tricks than ever before. To start out with, the Create-A-Skater option has been improved upon in nearly every way imaginable, with more clothing to attach to your ideal male or female skater, more material possessions to affix to their body, and more ways to bend your artificial mold the way you want them to look. Want to see your tattoo wearing, pirate hat and shoeless blonde's chest size stretch to unimaginable reaches? Then head on over to the scales to pump her babies up! Does your vest and army pants equipped white skinned male character need a darker tan? Give him one! Or what about giant thighs? Just about anything can be done to make your skater vision come true. In addition to people making, useable skate parks can be built from the ground up once again. Players are handed all of the necessary tools it takes to make their own skating arena, from benches, railings, motor homes, ramps, halfpipes, trees, and buildings to much, much more. These original creations can also be saved and modified for later use, like with any good customizable function.

What really sets the game apart from the previous installments however is in the main area of play, the Career mode. Here is where you can launch your own brand of character or one of the existing pro skaters (now with the return of Bob Burnquist) into earning cash rewards -- where it's possible to pay for hidden characters, levels, cheats, and even home movies -- and points to get further and further into the game -- where a set amount will unlock new areas. For the first time ever, players can now enter into any unlocked level, and skate freely around without the hassle of that two-minute timer reaching its end. Instead, players will skate right up to specific locations of the level, trade words with large arrow highlighted people, and then complete the tasks they assign.

Some of the past goals where you need to collect the individual letters of "S-K-A-T-E" or perform certain combos of tricks for a photographer make a come back. Brand new missions will have you doing all kinds of other stuff -- from knocking a certain amount of people into the water before the timer runs out, helping a prisoner escape Alcatraz by guiding your character through various areas of a level in order to amass a distraction, skitching (hanging on) the back of a stolen vehicle to take down the criminals within, or even collecting the letters "C-O-M-B-O" all done in one single thread of grinding balance. To top it all off, Neversoft has gone as far to include mini-games pitched within each massive level. While these games don't have any relevancy to your beating a level, they can be quite a fun distraction. Whether you feel like whacking some tennis balls, baseballs, or even basketballs with your skateboard, you can. Rewards will then be given out in the end for winning efforts in each game played. Aside from the main mode, there are Single Session -- picking any level you wish results in a timed session of seeing how far you can rank the highest points for the charts; Free Skate -- just a place to skate openly and freely in the level you want to, without the "mission people" annoyances; and the two player modes with loads of stuff to play with or against a buddy. Unfortunately, the GameCube version hasn't seen the fruits of Neversoft's labor to go online just yet. Next year, that will hopefully change for everyone's benefit.

Factored in are some introductory stunts, making their first appearance. And they are the ability to pull a spine transfer -- which evens out your landings from up and over walls, or falling ungracefully from a high point up -- and to pull a skitch -- which in skater terminology means to grab onto the back of a moving vehicle, and remain there until you've gone as far as you will, want, or need to. These two maneuvers are again bundled with a wide array of so many other insane moves that it's ridiculous.

Controlling what goes on in the game is easy when you're one with the series of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. By that I mean not only will you have to set yourself aside from other types of games you've played in the past, but you'll also have to gain an entirely different perspective in how you match yourself with the handling. After about an hour or so, when the controls start to seep into your fingertips, playing the game won't feel as tough as when it first began.

This being my first experience with the GameCube version in the Tony Hawk franchise, I've got to say it's difficult to adapt to the GameCube controls over the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 versions: the ones I'm used to. Elevating the character through massive places of point scoring, money making, and wreaking havoc feels like a dream. It's only that the analog stick, the GameCube controller's most direct point in playing any which game on the system, isn't exactly the best control type for a Hawk game. Even on the PlayStation/PlayStation 2 front, guiding any character with analog feels unnatural. For example, operating a Boneless jump requires the press of up twice, followed by a jump. It's a bit hard to discern if you've pressed up twice or not using the analog stick. And of course with the GameCube's directional pad so small, so out of the way, and so uneasy to guide the skater in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 with, it's only a minor dilemma holding the game back from its full throttle.

Neversoft has jumped to conclusions in further reinventing what it had to do with its former operations of visual delight. Taking the Hawk series to massive areas of every day life interaction, the last game still was missing something. That something was an edge: an edge that was sharpened this time around. Objects everywhere have been given a more natural, textured appearance, with rougher roads, grassier greens, tougher terrain; areas that might've once looked simplified now take life to the extreme. Really, it all shows: from cars, people, and even animals all going about their routines in new levels like a college campus full of nerds, jocks, and a whiney professor; a skate park called Kona, with smoothed out runways for zipping through and loads of halfpipe fun; and even a carnival area, brimming with the rides, games, and carnie folk to boot. It's here in these parts of the game's environments you can catch a glimpse of shadows and lights the likes of which you'll want to be seeing. Shadows reflect upon the skater world balancing themselves perfectly with light -- even over you or other people and objects seamlessly as they are to pass through these parts. Light affects everything too -- even when you grind stuff, sparks will fly.

One area Tony Hawk releases have and continue to succeed in is the character animations. Nothing beats watching the flow of your skater flawlessly linking tricks with style and grace, crouching and holding on to the back of car as it moves along the busy road to take off into a burst of speed, or the way in which NPCs act according to their personal associations with the world around them -- whether they're motivated to be frightened by a man hungry shark while dangling from a sign post, or clapping after you fall on your ass several times when showing you've got the wrong stuff to be a skating legend. On the same issue of character models, even though they do look great, they still aren't put together enough. A face of each person appears to have been pasted on, and that's it. No realistic facial expressions, no moving lips or eyeballs -- nothing! The body structuring though is a great thing, so at least it's not all bad.

Excellent as always, the game repeats the ways of the past in which sound really does make the game. Audio effects strewn through the background are dead on every time. Listening to the scrapes of the rolling wheels of your board over pavement and screeches over the grinding of a railing has never sounded more lifelike. It's undeniably unreal in how far the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has gotten, with now an entire wealth of character voices to add to every individual the engine pushes out (including the Create-A-Skaters themselves). More importantly, those who dictate mission orders have the most amount of dialogue to lend. Selective actors have a minor tone, only to express the point that you have to get the job done. Then there are others that take the comedic route, such as the case with Ollie the Magic Bum who really does sound as if he's a drunken mishap of nature. Surprisingly, the pro skaters, the gods of all that this piece of creation was intended for, showcases the very same people you can play as, as mission based order givers.

As the Hawk series expands into its older life formations, it seems as though the music selections keep getting older. Not that that's a bad thing; it's actually more of a personal preference thing. Everyone has a taste for what types of music they like. Some prefer classical, some like it jazzed up, and some just want to shake their groove bottoms. But nothing says "skate" like punk, rock, alternative, and rap. For those in the mood for a harder edge, you can tune into the stylings of AC/DC, System Of A Down, or even Iron Maiden. If you might be one of a softer nature, then maybe you'd like the works from Less Than Jake or The Offspring. Then to put some funky fresh into your system, there are rap pieces by groups like Run DMC and De La Soul. If none of the 30+ track offerings suit your fancy, there's once again an option to open the game menu, switch off the beats, and play the game without the conundrum running through your skull.