Kick Push
Imagine that concentrated awesome and win. Now imagine blowing it up across a huge scale of metropolis and shipyards, zoos, carnivals, skateparks. Forget the recent Underground games, or American Wasteland, or even the supposed return-to-form Project 8. Welcome Hawk 4.
Welcome to a plethora of rails to grind across, Salad grind 3-Flip out into nose manual, then into FS Tailslide across the oncoming rail. The rails of Kona, one of the finest skateparks ever made with funboxes, half-pipes and gaps far as the eye can see. Even a snake run's stuck in there. These are the rails of Alcatraz, the isle jail filled with rusty old stairways and ledges to crook down. Hundreds of feet to fly down from the top. Massive quarter-pipes to skyrocket you across the deathly waters of below. These are the rails of the bike-racks in London, ledges of the underground parking lots, windows to wallride of the great buildings populating the area. These are the miniature worlds in which you traverse by means of wheel and board.
Not interconnected, mind you, but that goes without saying, as Chicago does not sit beside London, nor Zoos by the lone standing Alcatraz. As the levels needed no interconnection, in turn they were able to create fantastic visionaries of various locations across the globe, built specifically for the combo-minded Hawk gamer in mind. So it lacks the loading tunnels of American Wasteland and the blah repetition of Project 8.
… isn't that a good thing?
Fear only the engine if you've come to grips only with the more recent iterations of Hawk; THPS4 lacks many combo essentials of today, including the seemingly obvious and basic walking maneuver, which means that players weaning on comboing in THAW or THP8 will have a little adjusting to do. Righteous adjusting indeed, though; this horizontally- geared level design means that there's very little massive drops from buildings to catch insane amounts of air to perform multiple 900s in succession. It's certainly still Hawk, but the horizontal focus means it's trickier to pin-point great spots for air, which ups the challenge in raising your combo. One could possibly be inclined to leave out special airs altogether, simply due to how the levels were built (and they were built excellently with much to trick over yet not too much to cause clutter.)
Your trek through the Career mode here was the ground-breaker back when; though Aggressive Inline beat it to the first punch, Hawk 4's open career refined the style and set it in stone. Skate up to pedestrians for goals to accomplish, be they performing specific tricks or nailing combos. Do the goals at your own pace, or just combo around and have a blast. The obvious borrowing from Grand Theft Auto rings no thoughts of the game because of how seamlessly it's intertwined here. The free-roaming of Hawk 4 became a staple in the series because of how well it worked here.
The Career is a doozy, too; skate around completing 90 goals, then an extra-tough pro goal. Then, welcome another heavy dosing of goals bringing the total to more than double than before. Just as the game seems to end, more life is breathed in to offer the most expansive career seen yet in a Hawk title. Even after completing each and every one of these progressively difficult goals, you still have all the gaps of the levels to nail. All the cash icons to collect. All the funky clothing and skateboard decks to buy.
Hawk 4 plays strongly to its extra content and customizability. There's multitudes of videos to unlock, one per skater featured in the game (there are many, more than ten) and then more yet. Skaters to unlock. A very robust selection of outfits and looks to create your own virtual skater with, more so that the most recent Project 8. A full, well-working park editor to create your own dream-park with, offering a large selection of pieces to place on terrain which can be modified on the grid-like pattern. Custom music to mask the game in case you don't like the offerings of Iron Maiden, Run-DMC, Sex Pistols or Offspring (among many, many others.) Of course, if you're not into the whole creation aspect, you could just pick a real-life pro and skate as him or her.
The key thing that puts THPS4 above all other Hawk titles and firmly up there with the greatest games of all time is the most basic attributes it possesses; it's extremely big and robust, and it's a gamer's game. Easy to pick up, intensely difficult to master (note: stringing together one million point combos is not mastery of the game. People can accomplish a hundred times that, plus more yet.) Forever fun to play.
Perhaps, the greatest game of all time.