Game #852: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5

 Speaking of horror games...

 I'm sure Robomodo didn't set out to make the worst Tony Hawk game on a home console, and I'm sure that Activision didn't give them a fair amount of time to complete it, but boy, every horror story you've heard about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is true, this game is hot garbage.

 I didn't buy the game right away because I hate digital-physical hybrids, but luckily(???) the game released on PS3 and X360 in a more complete state, kind of, the PS4 and XOne versions would end up getting a few extra levels and characters for free. Still, this version doesn't require a 7GB download, so it's still the winner among losers.

 I don't even know where to start with how Robomodo screwed the pooch. Let's start with the fact that moving around feels stiff and floaty at the same time. It's hard to describe, but it doesn't feel as good as the older games. It's easy to get stuck in corners and have a hard time getting out of them, because your hitbox when starting a run is horribly large. In order to help you move and interact with objectives you can start a run with R2 and break with L2. These two are actually good additions, since sometimes I'd accidentally start a manual when I was trying to talk to an NPC in classic Tony Hawk. That said, it's not perfect and it's kinda slippery, so stopping right where you want to stop is still a bit of a challenge. Sometimes even if you press R2 your character will take a running step but you won't move from where you are.

 The trick repertoire has been gimped so hard. Manual and Grind tricks are completely gone, so no mashing buttons for extra point multipliers, which is lame. Double tap flips are gone, in a way, since now they are your super moves. The Special gauge is very different in this game, after it's full you have to press L1 to enter Special mode. This is dumb because L1 is also used to spin in the air, so you'll accidentally turn Special on until you get used to it. Once you enter special mode all your grabs and flips turn into alternate moves, which is where the double-tap flips from previous games are, but this is a bit annoying because special moves require more air, and now your comboing is gimped. Now then, I don't think this was an awful idea, buuuuuut the way it used to work was much better.

 Robomodo actually tried adding a new mechanic, which, fair enough, they wanted to add something to the franchise, but the Slam was such a bad addition. Pressing triangle while on the air will make your skater quickly slam down into the ground. Most of the time you wish to use it it won't come out right, the rest of the time you'll be trying to grind onto a rail or skate the wall, but instead get forced down into the ground and losing your combo. To be fair, Robomodo listened and added the ability to turn off the slam from the menu, and this is on the PS3's disc by default, but I wanted to play the proper Tony Hawk 5 experience.

 Missions in the game are triggered by interacting with some dull and boring objective markers... or just press Select and pick any mission from the list. The missions are pretty repetitive, most of them are:
A highscore challenge.
'Break X amount of Y', 'Collect C-O-M-B-O letters', 'Collect S-K-A-T-E Letters'.
Grind/Manual/Collect X while having a high combo multiplier.
'Do tricks so that your head doesn't explode'
Collect X amount of Y and take them somewhere.
Run through the rings(VERY annoying because you don't know where the next ring will pop up.)
Use flip tricks to shoot something and break targets(Or just touch the targets).
Clear the pool of stuff.
And a few other variety objectives.
 If they did anything right, they took the AM/Pro/Sick challenge system from the final Tony Hawk games, which was a fantastic way of letting the player challenge themselves as much as they wanted without the rest of the game from them.

 The game has 7 stages and they are pretty mediocre. The second level looks kinda nice, but some of the stage-limits aren't very clearly defined. There's a school level, which is actually part of Tony Hawk 2's school level, but they managed to make it feel lifeless. Rooftops is one of the worst stages in the entire series, it's so bad that they had to give you a double-jump/ollie power up in order to traverse it, which is so dumb. In order to go to another level you have to pause the game, pick 'exit game' and then select 'Play' from the main menu all over again. What the hell? Oh, and the 'retry' option for challenges isn't immediate, which is ridiculous, you have to wait a few seconds after picking the option before the game prompts the window to ask you if you really want to retry the challenge.

 Character customization is a joke. You can't create a new character, instead, you have to customize pre-existing skaters, but it doesn't work very well, because a customized skater can only be made up of customizable parts, so you actually have to pick between 'Pro', how the character looks, and 'Custom', which is the random mish-mash of seemingly random heads and bodies. Do stat upgrades mean anything in the game? On one hand, you starting stats feel already pretty high, as I was doing massive jumps from the get-go, but on the other hand, every stat point I added to my stats felt like it changed nothing.

 The music is actually great, but I'm not sure if many of the tracks actually fit the game. The graphics are a huge disappointment. I think a cellshaded look would've worked great, but everything looks very basic. The game has an awful time loading textures, sometimes even loading a cloth's texture in customize-character can take upwards of ten friggin' seconds. Oh, and the framerate.... it can drop into the single digits for a couple of seconds every now and then. It's rather uncommon, but it happens.

 Robomodo had a very silly sense of humor, which I can respect, but I'm not sure if it fits the punkier tone of Tony Hawk. Inflating heads, pushing balls out of a pool, a 'Giant' power up on the fourth stage.. it's all very silly, and it adds its own flavor into the game, but I don't think it's a good fit for the series.

 Well... it's every bit as bad as they say. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about this one. I'd rather play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 over this one, because even though the gameplay is a bit more limited, at least everything it did, it did right. Still, I don't blame Robomodo, I blame Activision putting them under such a short deadline to milk every last nickel they could out of Tony Hawk.

2.0