METACRITIC TONY HAWK PRO SKATER 5 SERIES

In particular, the series honored skate culture’s distrust of authority and has long dunked on the police. In 1999, the series might have introduced many new people to skating, but it also tapped into youth and counterculture malaise, which feels just at home in 2020 as it did 21 years ago. “If you look at a skater like Shane O’Neill, who’s in the new game, if you look at the tricks he’s doing, they’re Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater combos that we didn’t think were possible back then.” “It made a new generation of kids believe are possible, and now they are,” Hawk said. While Hawk believes the THPS games brought skateboarding to new people, real-life skaters who grew up with the series have helped change the sport along the way, he said. “I like to think that helped people who were not clued in to the benefits of skating or the popularity of skating and helped them to understand that this could be a positive outlet for kids and communities to embrace.” “Before that, the only people who cared about skating were skaters themselves,” he said. He believes the game helped more people become fans of skateboarding and lessened any social stigma it carried. Hawk said it was “probably the most surprising outcome” of the first game that it introduced so many people to skateboarding, even if they weren’t interested in skating themselves. It’s possible that original games helped inspire communities that are now featured in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2.

Hawk says it was important to him that the remaster include wider representation not only racially or socio-economically, but also through gender identity-and so Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 features the series’ first non-binary skater in Leo Baker. ”As we evolved and as skating started to become more popular in different areas, then there were no more barriers like that.” “In the original game I wanted the roster to represent all styles of skating, but skating didn’t have a very diverse lineup back then, those are just the facts,” Hawk said.

Hawk said it was important to bring representation in this year’s release that didn’t exist in the old games. The remaster isn’t just a breath of fresh air for the series, but also for the gaming world’s efforts towards inclusion. And it includes songs from 37 newly added artists like A Tribe Called Quest, MXPX and Screaming Females. The game retains 22 of the artists from the original beloved soundtrack, including Dead Kennedys, Primus and Rage Against the Machine. New additions also include an extensive list of challenges, costume unlocks and the ability to make your own skater. Developer Vicarious Visions has succeeded in recreating the flow of mastering combos and playing in the skateparks. The series went mostly dark after that, with only a free-to-play mobile game released in 2018 to show for the last five years.įixing THPS, it turns out, meant going back to what made the original games so much fun. The past 10 years have seen disappointments like 2009’s Tony Hawk: Ride, which used a plastic skateboard as a controller, and 2015’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, which has one of the lowest aggregated reviews scores of any game in the current console generation, according to Metacritic. Its initial success continued through the mid-2000’s, but when longtime developer Neversoft passed the baton to developer Robomodo, review scores fell fast. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 has crisp, updated visuals (that look great in HDR), adds in a variety of moves that showed up in later games and includes other features common in modern video games, like online multiplayer and a mode to build your own skatepark. The muscle memory snapped back and I began landing combo after combo like no time had passed at all.

And though they couldn’t foresee what 2020 would become, the game is a bright spot in a dark year.Īs I pushed off into the fan-favorite Warehouse level, the first park from the series’ original game, I instantly remembered countless hours playing with friends, trying to set new high scores. As the 20th anniversary of the first game’s release approached, Hawk and Activision thought it was the right time to remake what had become a video game classic. And if you’re not sucked in by the sheer fun, the score chasing and incredible soundtracks will probably get you. If you’ve never played a THPS game, they fit neatly into that “easy to learn, lifetime to master” category. “That is a consistent request on social media, ‘Why don’t you remaster these games?’” “You don’t understand how many people ask me about ,” Hawk told TIME.

Metacritic tony hawk pro skater 5