CRISP. Gaming: Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 + 2 Review, Playstation 4

Heaven is a halfpipe.

From fading into irrelevance, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise is back with a vengeance as this entry takes the first two titles, remixes them with some of the best features and mechanics over the years, and serves up a delightful package with a cutting edge visual sheen.

With the franchise kickflipping into its twentieth year, to see a remaster so lovingly detailed, so mindful of its history and heritage whilst also luring in a new generation, is life-affirming to witness.

Activision – buoyed by the success of its Spyro and Crash Bandicoot remasters – have gone and done it again.

 

 

Graphics

Painstakingly and delicately remastered by Vicarious Visions and Beenox, the Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 + 2 introductory video perfectly encapsulates what’s been done here.

Scratchy 4:3 skate video gives way to amazing widescreen visuals of your favourite – and next favourite – skaters accompanied by the phenomenal Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Guerilla Radio’.

A perfect track choice straight from the originals, but it illustrates how a great and culturally significant game has been resurrected for the 21st Century…the right way this time.

In terms of visuals, a really interesting point is that all of the skaters from the original – Geoff Rowley, Kareem Campbell, Chad Muska – look their age, and the new breed is just as cool, including Tony’s son Riley and a host of up and coming champs.

Being greeted with a confident, playful and hyper-stylized main menu immediately washes away the taste of the misfires of Tony Hawk’s 5 and the original HD remake, offering quick and easy access to the courses of either title from the outset, as well as the return of Create-A-Park and custom skaters.

Booting up the iconic Warehouse serves more fresh waves of nostalgia, but perfectly touched up, modernised and leveraging the best of Unreal Engine 4 to give levels a sense of scale and presence that was simply absent in the original.

One strange initial disconnect is just how improved these environments are, they end up feeling strangely sterile as they’re so well defined.

One’s mind originally filling the blanks as PS1 textures jiggled away happily gives way to impressively rendered levels, starkly devoid of people – and even explicitly mentioned on one of the School level’s screens as homeschooling due to Coronavirus – ripped from the headlines!

Those feelings quickly subside once you see the sunkissed tarmac of Venice Beach or atmospheric Roswell looking better than you could have imagined.

 

 

Audio

Another area where Tony Hawk’s 1 + 2 is respectfully touched up nicely is the sounds – nostalgia manifests in what you hear just as much as what you see, and it truly delivers a great remix of old and new here.

No longer do you only hear the first two minutes of a song you love, only for it to get cut off at the end of a run!

Tracks – and the majority of tunes from the first two titles have made it – play in their entirety even though menus and loading screens, and can be skipped with a mere press of the right analog stick.

Alas, those in PAL territories like the UK will see more of their anthems get the chop..no B-Boy Document is still a crime.

The original’s songs have been complemented by a host of new tunes spanning genres from punk and hip-hop to ska and pop, as Primus and Suicidal Tendencies meet Skepta and CHAII.

Certainly more hits than misses in the new rendition, but the playlist is also highly customisable so you can keep it old school if you so desire.

It’s also great to now hear your own specific skater exclaim when landing a great combo, or grimace when they take a fall.

The grinds sound crisp, that roll of wheels on asphalt never better, and the improved audio is the perfect complement to the supremely tarted up visuals.

 

 

Gameplay

Just as twitchy and precise as you remember, the core gameplay is potentially the most divisive element of this series.

As titles such as EA’s Skate evolved things and took root in the simulation of skating – landing a heelflip without splintering your shinbones was a revelatory experience – Tony Hawk’s was all about muscle memory and million point combos.

New players will find its frenetic nature a far cry from the laboured rudiments of skating in a game like Session, but daisy-chaining a myriad of spins and grinds is infinitely more enjoyable and fantastical – the essence of being a pro skater, as it were.

Mechanics from later entries in the franchise like the revert (whipping your board around after a vertical trick) and manuals (skateboard wheelies!) make it in to extend combos far beyond their original limitations, enabling this entry a thrilling distillation of all the best elements, elegantly dovetailed together.

A new tutorial voiced by Tony himself walks you through many of the basics of skating, and it does serve as a good reminder that in terms of conveying true authenticity in terms of tricks, vibe and the culture, this game really nailed it back then.

And in terms of progression, the game is completely customisable, all levels from both games are quickly accessible after completing individual tasks of finding items, raking up high scores or landing combos, but the levels are still materially separate if you want a sense of progression through each one independently.

A new a very modern addition is the metagame of XP, challenges and levelling up your skater outside of stats boosts (which are found in the levels themselves) provides a real drive with constant rewards and other elements to achieve.

The core game feels great, and is almost as tight as the original, 60 frames per second making things even more responsive and a bit frustrating for those too wedded to the old ways…

The slow grind of stat boosts to your character makes for a true feeling of development and improvement in tandem with your growing proficiency at the game.

Online was a bit broken at launch, but great series of modes where you can show off your prowess – graffiti, trick score, combo score, single combo – split between casual and competitive.

Rest assured there will be one person in every lobby able to pull off 500k trick combos, sometimes making it tough to get a chance, but the promise of a bit more XP and the urge to improve spurs you on – just like the real thing.

 

 

Verdict

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a shining example of a remake done right, taking what made the original so addictive, introducing modern mechanics and levelling to make it even more so, and then condensing it all in this time capsule of halfpipe perfection.

Load times are minimal, presentation is charmingly crude in that way skate culture just is, tweaked to modern beauty with best-in-class HDR visuals and nary a dropped frame – it’s a glorious celebration of a wonderful time in ‘extreme’ gaming.

Play it now and get on your grind.