Embarassing
One of the things I love about a lot of video games in general is the chance to be creative, put your own personal spin on the game. I'm talking about create-your-own modes (one reason I'm such a huge fan of the Time Splitters series). Ever since THPS Two the franchise has been known for fantastic create-your-own whatever modes, and the number and size of the modes has grown continuously. The epitome of this trend was THUG where you could virtually create your own game with the create-a-goal mode. I was ecstatic, and all was right with the world until this game came along.
Creating a character in the story mode requires money for each individual item. Oops. Okay, you can create your own character outside the story and then it doesn't require money. But then you discover that there are, like, three types of each piece of clothing all depressingly generic and then something random like a parrot perched on the skater's shoulder. Double oops.
Disheartened, I move on to the create-a-level mode. Where's the create-a-goal tool? Gone. Where's the luxurious selection of pieces? Gone. In fact, there are about seven different pre-made parks, one of which is simply rows of half pipes and the other is that dumb recurring level with nothing but a tree in the middle. Apparently even the developers couldn't find anything to do with it.
I desperately go to the create-a-move tool. I always found this tool to be rather limited in it's use. Actually, they for whatever reason decided to expand this tool. Now you can create grinds, but it's very cumbersome.
In all, they got rid of ten times more then they added to this installment, and it really is simply embarrassing.