Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Updated Preview

By Ryan Davis, GameSpotPosted Sep 27, 2002 3:12 pm PT

We've got a brand new build of the fourth iteration in the Tony Hawk series in hand. Read our latest impressions inside.

Less than a year has passed since Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 first arrived on the PlayStation 2 and won GameSpot's elusive perfect-10 score, and already we're being presented with the beginnings of another entry in Neversoft's incredibly excellent skateboarding series. Activision recently sent us a three-level demo build of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, and it's given us a good feel of what to expect from the upcoming game.

Tony Hawk 4 will feature more real-world locations.

The full roster of pro skaters from Tony Hawk 3 has returned in Tony Hawk 4, and Brazilian skater Bob Burnquist makes his triumphant return to the fold after his stint in Konami's ESPN X Games Skateboarding. Though no hidden skaters have been revealed yet, there are four slots on the skater select screen that are grayed out, and the hulking gorilla seen riding a skateboard on the Neversoft logo screen is a probable suspect.

Past Tony Hawk games have featured some pretty outlandish level designs, sometimes resembling a regular skate park more closely than the locations they're masquerading as. The three levels featured in the build of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 we've been playing suggest that Neversoft is aiming for a style of level design that has a more solid grounding in reality. There's the university level, which is closely modeled after the campus of and outlying areas around the University of California at Berkeley. The San Francisco level features some of the most well-loved skate spots in the city, including the Embarcadero area, the ledges at Third and Army, and Pier 39. The Alcatraz level covers the infamous prison turned tourist destination all the way from the ferry docks to the roof of the main jailhouse. All three of these new levels are easily the largest we've seen in a Tony Hawk game so far, and their size, in tandem with their more-realistic design, lends them a sprawling feel and makes them seem as though they're not quite as dense with skate-park-style objects as the levels featured in other Tony Hawk games.

The pro skaters have never looked better.

With each new entry in the series, the gameplay mechanics in the Tony Hawk games have been incrementally refined and expanded upon, and Tony Hawk 4 has its fair share of new tricks. The most highly touted new mechanic in Tony Hawk 4 is the spine transfer, which serves two key purposes. Firstly, when two half-pipes are set up back-to-back, a press of both trigger buttons or the Z button while you're in the air will let you go up the side of one of the half-pipes and down the corresponding side of the other, which nets you an extra transition combo bonus. This trick can also be used to save yourself from a bail if you misalign a vert trick and are in danger of hitting the pavement instead of the ramp. While it's not as revolutionary as the manual or revert tricks were, the spine transfer is simply another good addition to the huge arsenal of moves available in the game. Taking a page from Acclaim's Aggressive Inline, you'll also be able to hitch a ride, or "skitch," by grabbing onto the backs of the cars, trucks, and other vehicles that you'll encounter. This can be easily done simply by getting within a few feet of the back of a vehicle and pressing up on the D pad. Once you have ahold of the bumper, a vertical balance meter much like the grind balance meter appears, and if you fall too far to one side or the other, you'll simply let go. But, if you press down on the D pad while the balance meter is still centered, you'll be sent rocketing forward at tremendous speeds, making it possible to catch bigger air than has ever been possible in a Tony Hawk game before.

The multiple grind, lip trick, and manual system introduced in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 has undergone some fundamental changes. No longer do you have to press a direction on the D pad in combination with the triangle button. Instead, once you've executed a grind, lip trick, or manual, pressing any combination of the B, X, and Y buttons will transition you into a new trick. This new system feels more dynamic, allowing for much faster transitions between different tricks. Many facets of the core trick system have also been expanded. While the double and triple flip tricks in Tony Hawk 3 could only be performed with certain tricks, this limitation has been lifted in Tony Hawk 4. Interestingly, while the level design in the game is moving further toward the realistic, the new special tricks are leaning toward the more fantastical, and we've seen moves involving dribbling a basketball, spray-painting graffiti, playing a guitar, and having a fight with a ferret.