While much better than Ride, Tony Hawk Shred still manages to have some lingering problems.
The reason snowboarding works so great is because the board is stuck to your feet and can't flip on the slightest of motions. In order to perform a backflip on the snowboards you have to either ollie all the way for a second time in the air after jumping, or nollie in the same fashion for a front flip. You can also barrel roll by quickly tilting the board left to right in the air after jumping. Both motions are not easy to do by accident, and that's the greatest thing about them. Therefore, you don't have to worry about doing a front flip when you were trying to grab.
Unfortunately, this problem hasn't been fixed with the skateboarding portion of the game. Kickflips and pop-shuv-its work like they should, but when you try to jump and perform a grab or simply ollie you may find yourself kickflipping instead just because you tilted a little bit too much to the side in your ollie.
Thank goodness then that grinds haven't been screwed up, because they were some of the best tricks from Ride. Grinds feel great and unlike Ride the board properly aligns back straight along with your movements instead of hanging at an odd angle sometimes at the end of the rail like before.
The best changes to Tony Hawk Shred over Ride, however, are the levels. Gone are open levels in which you could travel in any direction. Instead, every single level in the game is a "downhill jam" type run where you are consistently moving downhill. This format works much better because you don't have to fight to turn yourself around either too much or too little in order to line up with your next trick opportunity, it's all downhill.
Not to mention, the levels themselves are much more exciting this time around. Windows will bust, confetti will fly, giant snow statues will collapse. It all comes together for a much more lively experience rather than the personality-lacking levels of Ride.
Overall, my main problems with the game still come down to the board. That's why I haven't talked about many of the other features. Sure the levels are great, the characters are great, and the challenges are decent; but you feel like you're still fighting the board every once in a while. Once again, the snowboarding works the best, but even though the board is programmed a little bit different this time around it still gets in the way a little too much. Oftentimes I was taken out of the experience (almost exclusively in skateboarding modes) because I just couldn't get the board to distinguish a kickflip from a pop-shuv-it or grab.
Fortunately, the game never really asks you to do distinct tricks and prefers making you do generic types of moves. For instance, it will never tell you to specifically do a 50-50, but it will tell you to do some type of grind. This makes the inconsistencies of the board a little bit easier to manage and is very welcome when avoiding frustration.
In conclusion, the game still isn't perfect. If it were exclusively snowboarding I might have ranked it higher, but as is I just can't do it. Don't mistake me, it IS better than Ride, but being so it's still mediocre. You'll still come away with leg pains, and if you're trying to do specific tricks good luck, but Shred does make quite a few changes over Ride that are good too. It's just still mediocre.