Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4
From Activision Inc.
Drop into the ultimate skating challenge with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. Players take on the role of legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk and 13 other athletes as they skate through enormous free roaming levels, choose from 190 progressively harder goals and build their skills to perform 14 of the greatest skateboarding stunts of all time. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 delivers the deepest and most challenging gameplay experience yet in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. The game's enhanced career mode allows players to earn respect and the chance to take on all new pro goals by conquering a skater-specific Pro Challenge based on each skater's personal history.
Amazon Sales Rank: #10478 in Video Games Brand: ACTIVISION Released on: 2003-03-05 ESRB Rating: Teen Platform: GameCube Number of items: 1 Dimensions: .33 pounds
Amazon.co.uk Preview Just in case you didn’t know, the Tony Hawk's series is the best skateboarding sim ever--and now, with the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, even more so. As many of you young hipsters may be aware, skateboarding is taken far more seriously nowadays than any child of the '70s could ever imagine, with legions of baggily trousered youths now able to refer to moves such as a "bluntside" or "overcrook" with a perfectly straight face. Indeed, the list of silly names for ridiculously dangerous stunts has been increased for this latest sequel, and you now have the added ability to skitch (hold onto the back of a moving car) and grind through traffic. Such minor additions aside, though, the big new change is the career mode, which now has specific goals and milestones for all the different skaters and really adds to the replayability. Curiously, the graphics are still not particularly good, with the same slightly muddy, undefined look to them that the developers presumably now think is all part of the fun. They have however thankfully realized that having time limits for the levels was unnecessary and, except for a few specific missions, you’ve now got all the time in the world to graze your knees and cave in your skull. This is looking, as the kids on the street say, "sick." --David Jenkins
expanding, expanding... Speaking as an owner of all of the previous Tony Hawk games for N64 and Gamecube, Tony Hawk 4 makes some drastic changes for the better. I can't say that the graphics are stunning, because they seem the same or just a tad better than THPS 3, but I can say that taking out that rediculous time limit that was old after the first game was a great idea. Other new ideas are the long awaited spine transfer, the idea of Pro Challenges which is one challenge that is unique to each individual skater (which is how you unlock the movies in this one)and the way that you have to talk to people to unlock goals, almost exactly like in the game Aggressive Inline. Although some goals are rediculously hard and frustrating, you can buy cheats for not much cash that will help you out greatly. Speaking of the cash, it is skattered all over the level like in THPS 2. To get more special trick slots, you must complete certain goals on each level that have to do with doing special tricks in insane places like doing a special trick over a huge gap or something along those lines. You have to buy the special characters, the cheats, and the movies that do not feature a skater. A change in the gameplay is the addition of new flatground moves. If you have seen Rodney Mullen's video from THPS 3, you were amazed. Now, you can do all those moves and more without moving in the game, such as pogos, casper flips, handstands, or handstand flips to name a few. You can use these to get your special meter up also, which is very handy in tight places. The multiplayer mode in the Tony Hawk series has never been great, but it keeps up the good work with new modes you can play in. Overall, with huge, great levels, new ideas, fun goals, and long movies, Tony Hawk 4 is still a must have for anyone who owns a system that supports it. pure ownage! this game is a major improvement over thps 3. not to say thps 3 wasnt fun and all, but it was getting repetetive. thps 4's reworked career mode takes the old career mode and throws it out the window, replacing it with a much more realistic and overall much more fun career mode(another plus is that you dont have to beat career mode 25 times to unlock everything!). there are now 16 goals in each level, plus 5 pro goals, for over twice as many goals per level as before! also, in the previous incarnations of thps, every level had high, pro, and sick scores, S-K-A-T-E, the secret tape, and a couple of other goals that were very similar from level to level. this meant that each level had only about 3 or 4 unique, interesting goals. not so with thps 4. there is still a high and pro score, as well as S-K-A-T-E and now C-O-M-B-O in each level, but the other goals are all unique to the particular level in which they take place. this makes for a lot of more interesting goals, which keeps career mode more fun overall. there are also miscellaneous mini-games such as tennis and a baseball home run contest to entertain yourself with... and earn some spare cash, if youre good enough. plus, with the overall time limit removed, you can skate around in career mode as much as you want. also, as thps 2 and 3 did before it, thps 4 expands the series' trick roster. in addition to adding more mundane tricks, thps 4 adds skitchin', which is latching on to the back of moving vehicles, and the spine transfer, which allows you to launch off of one side of a spine and come down on the other side. thps 4 also makes freestyle tricks--my favorite kind of trick--much easier to do and greatly expands the freestyle trick repertoire the game has to offer. no longer do you have to combo out of a special manual trick to do freestyle tricks--now you can do them out of any manual or nose manual by hitting any combination of two trick buttons. you dont even have to have a full special meter anymore! this doesnt make freestyle tricks any harder to balance, but it does make them more accessible and more like a normal part of the game.overall, thps 4 id say is by far the best in the series, taking what was good out of the previous games and expanding on it, and taking what was bad with them and fixing it. its not absolutely perfect yet, but its as close as any skating game has come yet, and probably will retain that position until thps 5 comes out. :-)enjoi! The Ultimate Skating Sim I am a real-life skater, so I have fairly high expectations in skating sims. I have played THPS 1, 2, and 3 and all of them were original and fun. However, this one left them all behind. The new career mode format, which allows you to skate for an unlimited amount of time until a goal is activated, is convenient and makes career mode ten times more fun. Also, the fact that each level contains more goals than in 1, 2, or 3 makes the game more challenging and gives it more replay value. This is a must-buy for all skaters/gamers, and most everyone else, too.
