Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

The early Tony Hawk games have always been fun to play, so when Robomodo, Activision, and the Hawkman himself announced plans to create an HD version of the classics, I was pretty excited. For those who were burned out or disappointed in the last few games, going back to the basics has really made arcade skateboarding gameplay fun again. This version of the game focuses on Pro Skater 1 & 2, with content from THPS3 coming later as DLC, and features a new look and online play. Most of the original soundtrack is available, as well as extra songs that fit into the vibe of Tony Hawk.

If you’ve never played the original games, the way that the game breaks down is like this: you have multiple goals in the span of 2 minutes, so replaying a level over and over was necessary to achieve all of the goals. Aside from reaching a specific score, goals included things like grinding or performing a trick around a certain area, collecting the letters S-K-A-T-E, collecting hidden tapes, and other level specific goals.

For Hawk veterans, All of the goals you remember are still here, and you’ll gain extra incentive to reach a certain scores since leaderboards have incorporated into this game, as well as earning money to upgrade you preferred skater.

For any type of player though, the game includes a map accessed from the pause menu, which shows you all of the locations, so its really a matter of patience and frequently checking the map to find all of the collectibles.

Aside from the nice new visual style, the main skating features remain intact from the original, but this is a good thing. Its pretty simple to pull of tricks, and chaining them together requires a bit of manual usage since reverting is not currently available at the moment for the game. Multiplayer features in this game are all based online. There's no splitscreen which is a bummer, but its still fun to play online with friends. The modes included are Score Attack, Graffiti, Head Explosion, and Free Skate. Head Explosion is pretty neat because you have to constantly keep performing tricks to reduce your head size before it explodes. If you play as an avatar, you're given a balloon which you must not allow to be popped. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't appreciate avatars' head exploding in any game.

All of the included levels are still fun to play and were actually chosen by fans, showing you that Robomodo really wanted to create a game just for fans. Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD is a must play for fans and great way to reintroduce the skating franchise to gamers that may not have played before.