The slam button is a big issue and interrupts long combos and look intrusive as hell. The player is seen bailing in the middle of the air for no reason at times. This is the best footage out so far, skill wise. There are other videos but that other guy is terrible at this game and constantly bails.

thoughts?

EDIT: After watching a few twitch streams, I can say the game looks good.

It's insane to me that this is a full £40/$60 game when graphically speaking it looks wholly unremarkable. Gameplay resembles what I remember of THPS, though it all looks incredibly lifeless in motion. Also seems that at a certain point the music just... stops?

it looks bad, but this series has always been pretty bad

I am at work (so no sound on video) and admittedly did not do too much digging, but where is this Slam mechanic mapped on the controller?

@mfjubes: It's the Y/triangle button. So every time you grind, you slam down...yeah, it's as bad as it sounds.

Maybe this is just training mode or something but it looks incredibly lifeless. Like, devoid of any vital signs or personality.

While the SKATE series actually tried to innovate the genre this looks like it takes an unhealthy step back in time.

Huh, the slam mechanic could be fun but I don't know if it's enough to save this game. While THPS was always a stiff looking game, this looks a little sad :( I wanna hold out hope but it's waning.

@redglovesociety said:

Duuuuuude.

I was thinking 'oh that's not a huge deal' if it was mapped in a similar way as, say, spine transfers, where you have to hit a deliberate set of buttons to execute on the command. But automatic Slams when you initiate a grind? I dunno about that, man.

Then again, maybe it's not so bad. As long as you hit the grind button only when you're supposed to grind/aren't mashing like a madman, then I suppose it's not much different? Can't really say since I haven't touched it, but it might not be a huge deal once people get comfy with the game.

I've been watching people play it on twitch; and unfortunately, It looks like a budget title. What a bummer. I mean, maybe it's good, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

This looks like a Tony Hawk-ass Tony Hawk game to me.

What a bummer! I was keeping expectations low but still had hopes this would recapture the magic of those first four Tony Hawk games.

Yeah very lifeless. I mean the area did it no favors but I agree with that assessment.

Ok, are there reverts in this game or not?!? Every video has been revert-less and it's driving me insane.

I mean just for comparison this is Jet Set Radio Future that was basically a launch game for the original Xbox.

What is the "Slam Button"? I haven't kept up with this game and I have no idea what I'm looking for in that video.

@bollard: Basically what it sounds - there is a button that will "slam you down" from the air in order to facilitate grinds better - sort of like a Tetris piece. For instance you're going to fly over this bench, but BAM, you hit the button and instantly drop like a rock.

Maybe you've just never liked this sort of game, but there was a time when THPS was a great franchise. I'd personally put THPS 2 and 3 in the discussion of the greatest games of all time, and they both hold up incredibly well and are fun as hell to play even today.

Even when the franchise started getting a bit worse, it still didn't take a total nosedive until Robomodo took over and started making games with dumb peripherals and for mobile platforms.

More like slamdunk!

Gameplay doesn't look terrible, but holy shit those graphics..

Damn

@humanity: No offense but the Skate games were just as bland and generic. The levels had zero personality and every iteration was the same game.

Really? That's kinda sad. There has to be some you tuber out there who used to bust out 1,000,000 point combos in the warehouse / hanger, right?

On another note, being forced to slam down every time you grind looks completely awful.

@redglovesociety: They had people walking around and such but what it had really going for them was that regular looking city elements presented an actual fun challenge to skate. Admittedly I never really liked the flick mechanic for tricks in practice, but in theory it was a great idea and when it did work pulling off even a single trick felt immensely satisfying.

The fact that there's zero music for most of the video certainly doesn't help. I feel like even if the game was great, only being able to show it in near silence due to music licensing issues can only hurt its image.

For the record, I'm fairly certain the two times I noticed the player "bailing in the air for no reason" at 0:29 and 5:08 are because the player is catching the grind rails above the quarterpipes at some awkward angles, like it's trying to spine transfer into a non-existent thing. You can hear the skateboard slam into it. It's a weird thing but I remember that happening in THPSHD.

Other than that: echoing the part where trying to sell this for $60 dollars seems insane. I even sort of enjoyed THPSHD as someone who never really played the early Tony Hawk games, but part of that was because it was a fairly cheap downloadable game. I'm sort of interested in this, primarily out of morbid curiosity, but even morbid curiosity can't justify that price.

Personally, I'm holding out for the THPS5/KOF XIV PS2 bundle.

When Tony Hawk biffs it, he blankly stares up at the sky as if saying "Dear God, why did I agree to this?"

I'm already digging in my heels in preparation of the innevitable hipster contrarian wave of "Well, actually *adjusts glasses* it's not that bad".

Holy shit, I thought this was a little $15/20 release. I can't believe they are charging full price for this.

Nice Fat Mike pic..I really wanted this game to be good. . .

I can't really tell how the game plays but it looks like a Tony Hawk game to me. It's unfortunate that the graphic style makes it look bland and lifeless. I'm thinking they should have at least priced it at 50$ like Transformers: Devastation which looks a whole lot better with it's cel shaded style.

Seems fine just watching a quick clip of it. Wonder how it feels.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 I might say is probably top 3 games of all-time on Playstation for me. I remember when the original Tony Hawk first came out it was one of those games that kinda came out of left field. All I remember was the game didn't get a huge push marketing wise but was getting nearly perfect reviews and was being talked about alot in middle school back in the day. THPS was also one of those series that kinda opened up my music library to include things that were not exclusively hip hop.

@lincoln said:

Yes there are reverts, but I believe it's remapped to R1 instead of R2.

Strip me naked and burn me on a pyre, but that slam doesn't seem so bad. It actually looks like a pretty elegant and stylish solution to "Fuck me, I totally overshot that rail because I'm a worthless pile of human trash" followed my angrily restarting a mission for the umpteenth time.

Doesn't look like it's worth the money though, but maybe there's a lot of excellent content in there. I'll wait for more reviews and impressions before passing any serious judgement on it.

Well, it looks like the original PS1 game ported to new consoles with a graphical make-over, which is all some people want... I guess...

That said, it also looks totally unfinished and borderline broken (Character pushes off into this air while staying completely still after bails, music just... stops?). Honestly, the video makes it look more like a developer proof-of-concept or demo level than anything from a finished game. I'll reserve judgement until I see the final product in a QL (and I am 95% sure I'll skip it, regardless).

Watching that footage it just looks real bland, nothing egregiously wrong with it but nothing stands out either. Without having a chance to play it and see if it actually controls better than it looks I can't really pass judgement there but I'm not shelling out $60 for the privilege of finding out. It does however look like they were probably using the HD game as a base especially when it cuts to white after a fall.

From the way the skater kinda glides onto a rail and the teleporting after bailing, I bet this still has the really fucked up physics model from THPSHD. Whilst the original Tony Hawk games didn't have the soundest physics in them, the way the skater accelerated and moved is just so baked into my muscle memory at this point that THPSHD felt so incredibly wrong that it just sucked. It's probably an incredibly impossible task, but I really should get my Unity skills up to snuff and make an open source THPS clone that is literally just like a grey box, but one with an insanely fine tuned replication of the THPS physics model and trick system, so that people can fork that and make their own custom THPS-styled skating games.

@wolfgame: Tony Hawk 1, 2 and 3 were quality games.

So is there even a manual / revert in the game? the vid OP linked had no combo links at all. Also crazy how the music just stops halfway through. It's 2015!

spoiler alert: this is a shitty ass game that sucks

Ech. It doesn't look as sluggish, speed wise, as THPSHD did, which is good, but it has that same... mushy quality. It just doesn't look tight to play.

Does this game even have a soundtrack?

I was never much of a fan of THPS - I was a weird one who liked THUG a lot more - so I have virtually no opinion on this at all. Although I know that slamdowns on the damn grind button are a shit idea.

Also, in the freeze frame at the end, it hit me that the PC kinda looks like Brad. He's even wearing his shirt!

Aside from you know... those first 3-4 games that basically conquered the industry in the late 90's and early 00's...

More like Tony Hawk's GoPro Skater, am I right?

I don't really get all the griping about the graphics I think it looks fine. I mean, its not a graphical powerhouse by any means but I wasn't really expecting that. Besides that, I think the flow of this game looks completely inconsistent. The way you magnetize to rails looks super janky. The animation (or lack there of) when you crash is really lifeless plus the fade to white when you reset just looks sterile and bad. Litlle things like the speed in which you jump or land totally sucks the momentum out of your combo's and leaves you messing up more than you feel you should. That's what it seams like to me any way.

The lack of music in this video doesn't help it's case either but that's not the games fault. Man, it's a real bummer this game doesn't look better game play wise and charging full price for it seems crazy to me. Maybe patches will fix some of the more janky looking things but I don't know man, I'm not too hype as I was for this when it was announced.

Looks fine to me.

Yes, the graphics aren't fancy, but that's okay. Do they have to be super complicated to make a good game? No.

I don't see a slam problem either.

Really the only issue I see is that maybe the game isn't deep enough for today's players.

Honestly for the graphics it isn't really that they're bad at any real fidelity level, but there's really no real design to any of it. Given the early screenshots it looks like it was originally intended to be a realistic looking game on a low budget, the change to a more cel-shaded approach looks like it improved things but many of those assets don't look like they were designed to fit that mold. In many respects it looks like an up-ressed PS3/360 game, which given the time between their last release and this one, plus the fact that it at least seems to be running at a high framerate seems pretty likely.

To be fair the lack of music makes me think the game may of glitched or that's a poor design decision not to cycle through the soundtrack. Considering what they've put forward as far as marketing goes I don't have much confidence that patches are going to be on the agenda unless it somehow sells at all.

I'd rather just remember the good ol days. Not fucking Go Pro logos everywhere.

For me it's the same problem that Jeff had with gears of war, tony hawk was a very capable game at the time but has not aged well. They played its mechanics into the ground year after year. I bought THPS2 on dreamcast and enjoyed it at the time, but if we are just going by the standards of THPS 1-3 I guess this new game should get a 5/5 and be goty

@wolfgame: I think you're kinda underselling how important even seemingly minor differences in the mechanics and level design can make in games like these. Robomodo's own THPS HD is a prime example of that - although it had other failings as well such as some questionable decisions about which levels to include and actually having fewer levels and characters than most of the old games.