Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Review - Screenshot 1 of 3

Only eleven months after the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, the Hawk is back in this sequel to the award winning skateboard game.

Over the years the Tony Hawk series have managed to get a huge fan base, and there is no doubt that this was a highly anticipated title. If you're interested in the skateboard genre, the sport or just want a good game, you should definitely check this game out. Lots of new gameplay mechanics, improved graphics, new tricks and new multiplayer modes should be enough to keep most people busy for a while.

The Tony Hawk games created their own genre, if it wasn't for Tony Hawk, most skateboard, snowboard, BMX and surfing games probably wouldn't existed. Activison have made lots of money on the franchise, and although other companies have tried to make similar games, Tony Hawk is still the best.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Review - Screenshot 2 of 3

In the previous games, you play as a skater, earn points and play until you'll get to see that skater's video. in THPC 4 it's a lot easier to change between skaters, and when you earn stat-points with a skater, you also raise the other skaters points. It's also easier to get to a skater's video, because you don't have to complete all goals with each skater anymore.

On each level you have 16 goals that you can complete, but it isn't like the previous games where you have two minutes to try to complete some goals and than do that over and over. This time you don't have to think about time before you start a goal. You get the goals from different people around the area, and they can involve anything from collecting letters to track down pink elephants. After completing 100 goals you'll get to the pro challenges, which is basically like the regular goals, but they are harder and more time consuming, and each skater has their own unique challenge. Each Pro challenge unlocks the skater's video and some new goals for every level.
When you complete a goal or a pro challenge you earn cash, cash is also floating around in the levels. You'll use the money to purchase new skaters, new levels and some cheat modes.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Review - Screenshot 3 of 3

In addition to the career mode, you also have the regular modes from the previous games. You can play the different modes on the levels you've unlocked through the career mode, but there won't be any goals or anything like that. You can also play with other players, using the multiplayer modes, like Score Challenge and Combo Mambo.

Like the previous games in the series, THPS let you create your own levels. And this time it's even more fun, as the area you can build levels in is much bigger than before, and you also have lots of new stuff to play with, like new quarter-pipes, rails, houses and old ruins.

Conclusion

If you enjoyed the previous Tony Hawk games, you will probably like this one too. It still has the same core gameplay mechanics, but with some very good improvements. Of course I also recommend it to people who haven't tried the series before, the easy-to-learn and rewarding gameplay should appeal to pretty much everyone who likes platform or action-sport games.