Game #860: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

  So that makes it... Tony Hawk 3?

 It's been a long while since we've had a Tony Hawk game THIS good, but Vicarious Visions did an excellent job with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, bringing the classics into the modern day without ignoring most of the tweaks and upgrades future games would bring into the formula.

 It's no secret that I think Tony Hawk was at its best after they did away with the 2 minute counter, but beggars can't be choosers, so I won't complain about going back to how the classic games worked.

 While we can't get out of the board, it's not a feature I think is absolutely needed for the series. It helped getting around a few obstacles, like stairs, but it wasn't a necessity. What was kept from future games are the Reverts from 3, as well as the Transfers, Lip Tricks, Grind tricks and Manual tricks from Tony Hawk 4 and the wall plants from Underground and, lastly, the double and triple button input from... I don't exactly remember which game. I think this makes for an absolutely massive moveset that lends itself oh so well to creativity when making combos. The game feels a bit faster than previous games, which is neither better or worse, it's just different.

 Create-a-Skater is a bit lame, there are enough faces and hairs to create something decent, but there are no color-wheels for clothes which feels very limiting, specially compared to what came before.

 Cheats are unlocked from the get-go as assists, and beating the games unlocks more mods, like altering the size of your skater or adding filters to the visuals, which is pretty neat since we are living in an era devoid of any fun cheats.

 There's no blood, which sucks since it takes away from the Punk humor of the series, but, on the other hand, there's no fog, which was one of the biggest issues with Tony Hawk 1 and 2. Not only is there no fog, but the environments look AMAZING. The time of the day or the decorations, such as graffiti, may have changed, but the levels are pretty much exactly as they were before.

 Alongside the old old Skaters from the original games, we get a bunch of new blood, some which you may have seen in Tony Hawk 5. It's pretty neat that this new game can give more exposure to the new generation, as the original game did for the original Skaters.

 I saw some people having trouble accessing some secret areas in the game because they couldn't jump high enough so "now it's broken'. They are wrong. Filling your special gauge not only grants you access to super moves, but it also makes you go faster and jump higher. The levels are an excellent recreation of the originals, and the gameplay is top notch.

 The game is divided into level sets, you get Tony Hawk 1 tour and the Tony Hawk 2 tour. There's also Free Skate and off-line split screen modes. Since THPS 1 had less challenges per stage, a bunch of new objectives were added for parity with THPS2. It's still pretty short, I got 100% completion in about 8 hours, but, hey, they were some incredibly fun 8 hours.

 Classic objectives are identical to how they were, even the Score challenges were kept the same, so with the new expanded movesets they are fairly easy to complete, unless you are Darksyde Phil anyways.

 The one big change is how Stats work, instead of buying them, like you did in THPS2, you must find stat points hidden in each level. There are three Skater types(Which affect their starting stats) and each type has their own hidden locations for these stat points. Nothing too crazy or out of your way, for the most part at least.

 I think this is a brilliant game and I adore having more Tony Hawk in my life. While it is a Remake, since these games were so old it pretty much feels like a new game. And it's nothing short of amazing how great I found the game despite the fact that I prefer the latter type of THPS games. Oh, and considering THPS 3 was the last of this type it totally should've been included in here, but I'll take what I can get.

 8.5