Despite Being The First Tony Hawk Game It Is Still Very Fun And Challenging. Nuff Said.
Let's put the Tony Hawk franchise into perspective. So far, there have been four Tony Hawk games released or planned for the Playstation, three for the XBox, three for the Nintendo 64, three for the Gameboy Advance, three for the Gameboy Color, two for the Playstation 2, two for the Gamecube, two for the Dreamcast, two for the PC and one for the Macintosh. The scary thing is that, aside from portables, all the games are just ports. No system exclusives or anything to that sort; Activision has sold their sole to the devil and they want you to know about it.
It's easy to understand how the Tony Hawk games quickly got old for some people, but that's no reason to knock on the original. When Tony Hawk showed his face on the Nintendo 64 it was a breath of fresh air. The game was clever, imaginative and most importantly, fun to play. Just skating around in an abandoned warehouse searching for rails to grind or trying to ollie yourself onto the roof of a school was a blast. Sure, there were a few dull levels that almost ruined the fun (the Dam and the huge letdown when you finally reach Roswell), but pulling off a varial over Lombard Street in San Fran or hopping roof tops in Minneapolis more than counter balanced the bad.
Gameplay : Your goal is to skate through levels, completing objectives such as grind five picnic tables or collect the letters in the word skate. For every few objectives you complete you'll unlock another level in which you'll be given more objectives. To break up this monotony though, you'll also have to compete in three judged skating competitions where you'll need to garner at least a bronze medal. Absolutely fantastic, control is great. Moving is done by the control stick or d-pad, moves are done using the c buttons, and the L and R buttons turn you around while in the air. The moves are easy to learn, but are tough enough to master that you won't exactly be getting 50000 point scores the first time you start a game. Nearly anything in the game can be grinded on.
During career mode, you can take any of the 10 available skaters through the game's nine levels. In 6 of them, you are given 5 objectives to complete. Two will be to accumulate a certain amount of points, you must also find the 5 letters hidden in the level that spell out ''skate, a hidden video tape, and 5 objects scattered around the level (the objects you must find depend on the level. Completing these objectives award you tapes, which in turn, unlock new levels, boards, higher skater stats, and ultimately a secret character. A two player move lets you play points attack, horse (try to do the highest scoring move of a an object, loser gets a letter), and graffiti where you tag obstacles with your color by doing moves off of them.
Nothing that will ache your hands. The control stick moves your skater around and the c-buttons are used to pull off tricks. When you start the game, you'll sometimes see some advice in yellow as you skate around, so the learning curve isn't baffling.
Graphics : There's a lot of fog in the game and the backgrounds just jump into view out of a sea of white. It doesn't detract from the game play, but it can be annoying at times. Other than this the levels are good looking, although the colors are a tad bland, and the skaters move around fluidly. Backgrounds are very nice in this game. The levels are big and are filled with tons of grindable extras. All the skateboarders move realistically and also look great falling. Yeah, I'd really know about this part of the game, I've fallen on my...err, butt, side, head, and I've also fallen on my back after a failed move off a big ramp and then slid off the edge off a cliff or pool, or... I think I've talked enough about how much I suck now. Unfortunatley, the skater aren't too detailed. Overall, the graphics are pretty good, but isn't very close to blowing you away.
Sound : A few looping tracks from bands like the Dead Kennedys and The Suicide Machines make up the soundtrack. A lot of the lyrics are missing from the songs, but I still like it better than the more popular bands they got to perform in sequels. It would have been better with some Slipknot.
Tony Hawk started an annoying skater revolution in gaming, but it's easy to see how just by playing this game. While there have been plenty of other skating games since the original THPS release, none of them have been as creative or as addicting as the original. In other words, get this one and pass on the others.