Game #1133: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4(Gameboy Advance)

  Now we are playing the good handheld Tony Hawk games.

 Playing Tony Hawk's games out of order is always fun, now it's time for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, the one that changed up the formula and I really started to like them. When it comes to the Gameboy Advance the series followed suit too, with bigger levels and removing the time limit, so that now you must interact with NPCs to get your missions.

 There really isn't much for me to say that I haven't said in other Advance entries. The game is an isometrical take on the Tony Hawk games. Pretty much every trick and mechanic from the console game is here, there are six levels(School, Kona, Shipyard, Zoo, Alcatraz and London) and they are pretty faithful renditions of their console counterpart, so even if they were modified to better fit the system they are still recognizable. As with the other games on the Gameboy Advance, sometimes the perspective makes it a bit hard to understand how the different height levels work, but it's manageable.

 It felt like stages had more goals than in previous games, but a lot were repeated. Every stage had at least two 'Find the SKATE letters' and "Collect the COMBO letters in a combo". After you finish a certain number of goals throughout every level you unlock the challenging Pro Challenges with every character, and with those comes a new set of 'Pro challenges' per stage. So there's a lot to do.... even if a lot of it feels a bit repetitive.

 I feel like it's only slightly better than Tony Hawk 2 on the system, but only because I like this gameplay style better, as the other one felt like more of a direct port and this one feels more like a scaled down port. There's no denying that goals start feeling a bit samey after a while too, but hey, nobody is forcing you to play the entire game in one sitting.

 7.0