Even if you aren't into skateboarding, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 is still worth checking out.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 is a pretty simple video game to understand. You choose a skateboarder, choose a level, you do missions, collect money, level up stats, and do other things. Although this may seem simple, the missions do get a lot harder as you progress, especially the two last levels; Carnival and Chicago.
The main thing you do in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 is perform tricks. There are tons of different tricks; both street and vert. To perform a good trick, you must make sure you are around a good area. Simply click a couple of buttons to do what you want, and land it to get points. You can multiply your points if you jump and continue a trick, which is extremely encouraged. The best technique to making a really good and long trick is to manual and grind to other locations that have ramps where you can rack up some serious points. Points are pretty much what the whole video game is about, in a certain sense, of course.
To perform even better tricks, get your special meter full by doing a bunch of tricks. Once it is full, you can check out some tricks that give you a lot more points than other tricks, but they are a lot harder to do than normal tricks.
When you start a new file, you will only have access to one level, but you can gain access to many more levels once you get more pro points. To get pro points, you must talk to one of the human beings with a big green arrow over their head. They will tell you a mission, and you must complete it. These missions consist of you trying to break a record and get an extremely high score, performing a certain trick, skitching on a car, collecting letters in a certain amount of time, saving people from silly accidents, and a lot more things. In total, there are one hundred ninety pro points. Although that does seem like quite a lot, it is easy to get them once you get the hang of it. Every time you complete a mission, you get two hundred fifty dollars.
To access the pro challenge, you must get at least ninety of the one hundred ninety pro points. Each skateboarder has their own pro challenge, and you must find it in the location that the video game tells you. These pro challenges are some of the best challenges in the whole video game. Who can forget a memory like having Bam Margera ride in a grocery cart downhill?
The nine levels all offer you extreme diversity, and no two levels look the same. Some take place in locations, such as London and Chicago, while others take place at events that give people entertainment, such as the Zoo and the Carnival. In order to unlock places, you must get a certain number of pro points. Once you do, you have the option of opening one of two levels. The only levels that require you to use money to unlock them is the Carnival and Chicago, and those costs 15,000 dollars, which takes quite some time to get.
Money is usually found in random locations in the nine levels. Some are pretty easy to get, but others require you to use some very difficult tricks to get them. The money is just a small dollar bill, and they usually come in hundreds, unless you complete a mission and get two hundred fifty dollars.
Stat points are one of the most important parts of the video game because they help you out so much. Every once and awhile, after you complete a mission, you will receive a stat point. There are tons of stats that you can increase, such as skitching, manualing, grinding, balance, air, hang time, just to name a few. There are tons of stupid ones, like the ollie stat and other ones that are better left ignored until you have all the good ones increased. Choose your stats wisely. If you want to change your mind, you can edit them whenever you want.
The multiplayer mode is one of the best parts. While you can only play the levels you unlocked in single player/adventure mode, you can still play Pre-Made Parks. These are smaller parks, and are not as good as the real ones, but they do offer an enjoyable experience. There are between twenty and thirty, and the chances of you replaying a course more than once is incredibly high. There are so many fun games that you can play. For example, in King of the Hill, you must find the crown and hold it for the longest amount of seconds, but the other person can steal the crown if they run into you. Horse has one player go at a time. It is a simple game where one person performs a trick, and the other person tries to get another score. If the second person gets a lower score, then they receive a letter. Once they complete the word "Horse," they lose. Trick Attack has two opponents competing for the highest score. Free Skater just allows you to free skate as long as you want. There are a couple of more options, but I feel that these four are the best by far. You can also make up your own game if you use your imagination a bit, and the other person abides by the rules.
One of the coolest features is creating your own park. There is a good amount of skateboarding objects that can be created, as well as other things, such as water, a water fountain, spikes, fire, and a lot more things. Customizing your own place can be fun, but you will most likely be let down by the small amount of area that you have to put your whole skateboarding course.
If you are bored by Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, considering finding some cheats online and using them. Simply type the code in at a particular option menu, and you can gain access to some pretty sweet new things, such as new characters, perfect stats, matrix mode, slow-motion, gorilla mode, kid mode, and a ton of other stuff that makes the video game a lot easier, but a lot less fun if you have not beaten it yet.
There is no real storyline, but that does change in the fifth installment to the series. This video game just basically has you solve everyone's problems and have a couple of good laughs from the funny characters along the way. A video game like this really does not need a storyline, considering most sport video games do not have a storyline.
The graphics were tremendous at the time, and while they seem a little outdated in 2007, you can still appreciate all the special parts of the video game, such as the graphics. This video game gets very detailed with its graphics. The blood is also a good effect. That can be turned off if you do not like to see blood, though, or you can make it higher if you want.
The sound is amazing. You will hear your skateboarder hit the rail at the exact time he does, but the greatest part about the sound is the background music that plays some really good songs, such as "Drunken Lullabies" by Flogging Molly, "TNT" by ACDC, "Spokes-Man" by Gold-Finger, and much more. There are different genres, so if you like rap, then there is plenty for you. You can also edit out all of the songs you do not want in the track.
No one should pass up on such an excellent video game. If you are a fan of the series, then this is a great edition. It does not improve that much over the third one, but it still offers a couple of little tweaks that make it unique in its one way. If you have never played a Tony Hawk video game before, then you should probably get one of the newer ones, because those offer better storylines, more courses, and bigger ones, too. If you do have any of the newer ones, then this is still a great video game to add to your collection, especially if you enjoyed its predecessors and/or successors. The difficult is medium, but if you completed any of the other video games in this series, then it will be a heck of a lot easier. Collecting all one hundred ninety pro points should take you awhile, as well as getting all the money.
I am not a huge fan of sport video games, since you can just play them and have more fun with them in real life, but this one is a lot different from the real sport, since you can pull off some sick tricks that no one can do in real life. And plus, what's better than seeing Jango Fett on a skateboard?
Overall: 8.5/10