The Tony Hawk series at its best.
The story of this game follows a Jersey rookie skater and his best friend, Eric Sparrow, on their rise to pro. Along the way, they'll meet pro skaters, get sponsored, throw huge parties, enter competitions, and just have a ton of fun. While the story isn't much, it works for this game.
*Gameplay*-8.5/10
The gameplay is solid and great. You visit various locations around the world completing missions for the locals. These missions range from fetch quests to performing huge combos to competing in skating competitions. They also added the ability to drive cars in this game. Driving these vehicles may have seemed like a good idea on paper, but once you start driving them, you learn fast that it's a horrible idea. Thank goodness that only a few of the vehicle missions are required to beat this game. There's also special missions in which a pro skater will teach you a special trick if you perform it in a certain way. These can present a challenge depending on what difficulty you're on and how good your stats are. There's also an online mode, free skate/high score mode, and a creation mode. I haven't tested out the online mode, so I can't say anything about it. During the free skate/high score mode, you do exactly what the title of the mode says. Skate without having to do missions. You can play as pro skaters and secret skaters that you've unlocked in this mode. If you pause the game, you can get the option to set a high score for the level you're skating on. In the creation modes, you can create a skater, skate park, trick, and skateboard. These are all detailed enough for you to create a unique skater, skate park, trick, and skateboard. The only problem I have with any of these is that you can only perform your created trick in the create-a-trick mode. If you try to pull off the trick in any other mode, it will not work. Overall, the gameplay is great, it just has a few problems.
*Controls*-8.5/10
When it comes to skating, the controls are perfect. The control pad and right analog stick control your movement. Pushing up will increase your speed, down will cause you to stop, and left and right will move you in those directions. The start button pauses the game. The right analog stick moves the camera. Pushing the X button will cause you to jump, square and a direction on either the right analog stick or the D-pad will do a flip trick, O and any direction on the right analog stick or the D-pad will do a grab trick, and triangle will do a grind when on a rail or anything that you could grind on. Pushing these buttons in any order will perform different combos which is how you get points. Pushing R2 will switch your board around and pushing both R1 and L1 at the same time will allow you to get off your board. When off your board, all controls are basically the same except for the controls for doing tricks. The only added controls is that pressing R1 will allow you to grab nearby ledges and ladders and that pressing the triangle button near a vehicle that you can drive will put you in the vehicle. Once in the car, X is to accelerate, square is to brake and reverse, R1 is the handbrake, the left analog stick is to steer, and pressing triangle will cause you to leave the car. The only problems I have with the controls are with the driving. They are absolutely horrible. The car skids all over the place when you turn and trying to do a mission with one is near impossible. Thank goodness that when you need to do a car mission, it's very short.
*Graphics*-9/10
The graphics for this game are great. The only problem is during cutscenes and that the character's faces look flat. They don't show much emotion and overall, their face's just flat.
*Sound*-10/10
The sound and voice acting for this game are perfect. There's the normal skating sound effects, and then there's the voice acting during the cutscenes. They are perfect and I have no complaints.