When a pair of genuine classics are remade, they should look and feel like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Remake. Vicarious Visions has taken the original games by Neversoft and created a true to the original re-creation. The opening sequence, introducing all of the old and new Pro Skaters, puts the player into instant nostalgia mode. From there, this game is a non-stop thrill ride with both the original content to dive into and a ton of new adventures to explore with the custom skater, soundtrack, multiplayer online and create a park features.
The first stop is the tutorial mode. The tutorial is a great refresher course on how to skate, ollie, grind, perform flips, grab tricks and much more. The player can spend as much time as they want practicing the basic or advanced moves before moving on to the main course.
The Custom Skater creation mode is a detailed customisation mode that allows the player to make a skater with their pick of character faces and use in game currency to customise them including:
- Appearance
- Boards
- Apparel
- Tattoos
- Logos
- Decks
- Grip Tape
- Trucks
- Wheels
- Special Tricks
Having a custom skater gives the player a feeling of true investment in the unlocking of skate parks and the levelling up process.
Currency is earned by completing challenges and items unlocked by raising the player’s skater level. New gear is available for purchase in the store using dollars earned by completing levels and challenges in game. There are Rookie, Veteran and Legend Challenges and they spread out among the three modes available for play.
The player has the original modes of both games to playthrough, with a total of nineteen parks to unlock, including six competition levels. Each park has either a list of objectives to complete or medals to win in order to advance. If the player is able to complete the objectives and finish the parks, they will unlock the Speed Run objectives and the Free Skate for a total of thirty additional park goals. Each Pro Skater also has their own unique challenges available to unlock specific awards for each skater such as videos unlocked in the Extras menu.
The parks designs are true to the original games but are upgraded faithfully in every way. The attention to detail with updated graphics and lighting for each level creates a mood for each park. The drab feeling of The Warehouse is different due to the massive colour palette, which also uses energetic colours in Venice Beach with graffiti plastered over every surface giving it a vibrant texture.
Updated controls, with the new thumb stick use allow for easier turns and spins, while maintaining the original fluidity of performing the tricks one by one with ease for huge combo runs that are critical to those hard to reach ‘sick scores’ that must be hit to complete each park. Downhill Jam is still just as frustrating of a design that has aged 25 years, as it is a straight downhill and requires exacting grind precision to gain its secret tape.
The park goals for each level are pretty similar, with a few unique goals for each park. All skate parks have the same score based, finding the letters to spell SKATE and finding the secret tape goals, with just two minutes to complete them each round. The competition parks all require a medal of Gold, Silver or Bronze to advance and may take time to master in order to gain the required score for that elusive Gold medal (without bailing!).
The addition of Stat Points found in each level allows the player to upgrade the stats level for:
- Air
- Hangtime
- Ollie
- Speed
- Spin
- Switch
- Flip Speed
- Rail Balance
- Lip Balance
- Manual Balance
If the player is struggling with a specific goal, they can try allotting more points to a specific category to assist with completion of it.
For multiplayer, players have the option to either go for friendly ‘Jam’ sessions or if you are feeling like a Pro, try out the ‘Competitive’ mode. A range of games modes like Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Combo Mambo, Combo Challenge, Graffiti, Horse, and Tag are available for hours on hours of multiplayer fun, either Online or with up to 4-player local play.
Create a Park is a mode that players can spend countless hours in. From the ability to create your own park and upload it and share with the whole THPS community, to trying the countless number of custom parks created by both the community and the Vicarious Visions development team. This mode will keep the game fresh long after the player has completed the remade games. Using the creative juices to make the player’s own vision is an awesome addition on to keep players coming back. The Featured and Vicarious Visions courses are both hard and entertaining designs and are updated once a month. This reviewer will be coming back to check out what is new for months to come.
This game is fun for all ages, except for the music, which is a bit mature for younger children. The playlist is available allows the player can customise what they or their children want to listen too. The developers have included a ‘Game Mods’ section to where players can turn on assists and not worry about the difficulty of the game. No Bails! Just fun! With up to 4-player local multiplayer, this option is perfect for children and will make them want to play without the difficulty issues.
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Rob for One More Game
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Remake was reviewed on a PS4 Pro. It is also available on Xbox One and PC. Our thoughts on this title is ours and ours alone.