Review: Happy Action Theatre
Review: All Zombies Must Die!
Review: Self Defense Training
Review: Choplifter HD
Review: Your Shape Fitness 2012
Preview: UFC Undisputed 3
Review: NCIS The Game
Review: Raving Rabbids: A & K
Review: Worms Ultimate Mayhem
Happy Holidays 2011
Demo: Syndicate Co-op
Xbox 720 Will Be Six Times as Powerful
Demo: UFC Undisputed 3
Xbox LIVE Arcade House Party Dates and Prices
UFC Undisputed 3 demo launching next week
Resident Evil 6 Confirmed
Deadlight Turning on XBLA This Summer
Arcade: Haunt
Arcade: Scarygirl
Microsoft warns of fake Halo 4 beta invites
Happy Holidays 2011!
Calibur 11 Battlefield 3 Vault Review
Dungeon Siege III DLC: Treasures of the Sun Review
Two Worlds 2 – Pirates of the Flying Fortress DLC Review
Forza 4: November Speed Pack DLC Review
Deus Ex DLC: The Missing Link
KontrolFreek FPS Freek EPIC Review
Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition DLC
Captain America Pinball FX2 Table
E3 2011: Mad Catz Preview
All Zombies Must Die!
Self Defense Training Camp
Choplifter HD
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012
NCIS Game
Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking
Worms™: Ultimate Mayhem
Motion Sports: Adrenaline
Orcs Must Die
Black Eyed Peas Experience
Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3
Kinect Sports: Season 2
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7
Rayman Origins
Bejeweled 3
PowerUp Heroes
Tropico 4
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Goldeneye 007: Reloaded
Assassins Creed Revelations
UFC Undisputed 3
UFC Undisputed 3
Need for Speed: The Run
Saints Row: The Third
WWE ’12
Goldeneye 007: Reloaded
Assassins Creed Revelations
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Battlefield 3
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Motion Explosion (37)
Self Defense Training Camp (50)
Haunt (12)
Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 (47)
Scarygirl (12)
Warp (12)
Gotham City Impostors (12)
Shoot Many Robots (12)
Wipeout 2 (44)
Family Feud 2012 Edition (25)
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 (48)
Marvel Super Hero Squad: Comic Combat (40)
Happy Feet Two: The Videogame (45)
Final Fantasy XIII-2 (31)
The Adventures of Tin Tin (50)
Gunstringer, The (60)
Choplifter HD (12)
Jimmie Johnson's: Anything With An Engine (24)
AMY (12)
WWE ’12 (49)
Friday, November 21, 2003.
by Frink

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 Box art

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4

Share: Twitter facebook googlebuzz email

Welcome to the world of Neversoft’s Tony Hawk 4. Ok, I know you’ve all said it, “Extreme sports games are played out.” Well, Tony Hawk 4 will change your opinion entirely. The 4th installment has rid itself of the off the wall physics and outlandish trick scores that plagued Tony Hawk 3. No longer can I score a 700,000 point combo in the first 20 seconds of gameplay. Though that doesn’t help for bragging rights, it does add difficulty and realism to this installment. This, among many other improvements, bridges the gap to the latest Tony Hawk game and makes the game worth owning.


The basis of Tony Hawk 4 is, of course, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater engine, the same one used since the beginning; however, there have been a few changes since then. The big revision to the engine in Tony Hawk 2 was the manual, 3 was the revert, and now 4 is the spine transfer. This allows you to go up a spine (a set of ramps back to back) and transfer from one side to the other. This comes in handy in many situations and allows for a lot of gaps that were otherwise inaccessible. Another addition is that of skitching, which allows you to hold on to the back of cars and ride behind them for extra speed. The engine is as solid as it was in the beginning and it seems to just get better with every installment. The major gameplay improvement of Tony Hawk 4 is the free roam career mode. Taking a hint from Acclaim’s Aggressive Inline, Tony Hawk 4 has done away with timed runs and taken up a much freer playing environment. You skate around and then find a NPC with an indicator above his head. You then press B to speak and they give you a goal. These can be standard goals similar to those in the previous Tony Hawk’s (high score, S-K-A-T-E, big combos) or those completely new to Tony Hawk 4 (such as breaking the barriers off rails, freeing a painter from a shark, or the new C-O-M-B-O mode in which you must collect the letters to the word combo all in one combo). With every challenge that you complete you earn cash. At any point after you exit a level you can choose to spend your cash on movies, levels, secret characters, cheats, etc. Also, when you earn a stat point, the stat point goes to every skater, not just one. This means that you only have to beat all the 190 challenges once, not once for every character, to complete the game. The Create a Skater and Park Editor seem to improve slightly with every installment, but no vast improvements thus far. The Create a Skater now allows you to scale body parts individually, allowing a much more realistic (or much more ridiculous) character. There is also the option to purchase extra equipment for your custom skater (clown pants, eraser hair, things along those lines). In addition to all of this, Tony Hawk 4 now has a variety of mini games, from Tennis to Poo Dodge (a mini game in which you avoid feces flung by monkeys), to keep you entertained. Not all of these mini games are of the highest quality, but they are fun distractions to kill time. All in all, the gameplay is very solid and makes for a very enjoyable experience.




As a whole the visuals on Tony Hawk are great. The character models are better than ever and the environments are picture perfect. The texture of the environment are great, a good example is to look at the animals in the Zoo level, very well done. The character animations are all very fluid and smooth and the physics have been scaled down a little, making it more realistic than it was in Tony Hawk 3 and that makes the character animations even better looking. No longer do you just bleed, after falling down several times you receive bloody elbows, knees, and other battle scars. There is however one thing that bothers me, this issue is the look of the NPC models. From a distance the NPC models look quite good actually. When you accept a challenge, however, it zooms in on these models and they look horrible. They appear as though they were plucked directly out of an N64 game and placed into Tony Hawk 4, very blocky and a ton of jaggies. Even the character models used on the skateboarders themselves seem much worse than those used when you are controlling the character. But, outside of that the graphics look exceptionally good and provide a very realistic looking game.




Sound is a difficult category to rate on a genre such as extreme sports. The reason for this mostly is the fact that a lot of the sound that goes on in these games is music and judging music is all an issue of personal preference. However, Tony Hawk 4 does have a wide array of eclectic music and the custom soundtrack capability, so you are no longer limited to the default soundtrack. This means you can all now nail your perfect run with your favorite music playing in the background, video gaming bliss. The sound effects are all very well done. The NPC speech is all voice acted, which is a little touch that I enjoyed. Tony Hawk 4 is a much more believable world compared to the other games in the series so you can now skate by a crowded street and hear a number of conversations going on. This all adds to the realism of the game and its surrounding environment.




Suggestions:

Well, I can’t say I have a whole lot to suggest. Working on the NPC models would be great and new features are always nice. Something I’ve always wanted was the ability to drop in rather than falling from the top of the ramp to the bottom. But all those issues are minor and I just hope to see another game in this fantastic series.



Overall: 9.0 / 10
Gameplay: 9.0 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 9.0 / 10
Write your own review of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4. Click Here.
(Sign Up)
Xbox 360 Titles: 817
Xbox 360 Arcade Titles: 447
Xbox Titles: 832
Registered Members: 42,514
Forum Posts: 734,252
Staff Reviews: 1,062
Member Reviews: 10,339
News Articles: 10,941
Screenshots: 24,405
Xbox 360 Achievements: 35,954
Xbox 360 Faceplates: 2,016
Cheat Codes: 1,706

1. phuture 909 - 123,212
2. Unreal - 122,015
3. Symmetric-XBA - 89,725
4. tacohead - 80,991
5. Nato King-XBA - 60,413
6. 12buckmafia-XBA - 57,474
7. Variation-XBA - 54,765
8. Timmy Bauer - 51,965
9. Steeps5 - 34,799
10. Silent-XBA - 33,275
11. Enamelized420-XBA - 32,341
12. Kamshaft-XBA - 25,234
13. angeto - 24,628
14. oddjob428 - 23,850
15. Symmetrics Love - 22,540
16. thAshAdyOne - 19,865
17. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 16,170
18. Alx1138-XBA - 15,610
19. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 15,041
20. Tampad - 15,009
21. Ricepuppet - 14,722
22. Bakeman - 14,082
23. Soda Jones - 11,958
24. mattgame - 11,925
25. Fargoth - 10,294
(Top 150)
Deadlight
Post by Timmy Bauer
2 Replies, 151 Views
Amazing Skyrim cover!
Post by Kamshaft-XBA
3 Replies, 182 Views
Trials Evolution
Post by Kamshaft-XBA
2 Replies, 147 Views
Kingdoms of Amalur:...
Post by Symmetric-XBA
15 Replies, 342 Views
Xbox 360 Kiosk Discs
Post by Ed Hunter
13 Replies, 423 Views
Can you convert old...
Post by mutha_ucka
0 Replies, 214 Views
Batman Arkham City =...
Post by mattgame
4 Replies, 419 Views
Play free FIFA 12 game...
Post by adrean
0 Replies, 272 Views
Apple iPad2…Is it a...
Post by adrean
4 Replies, 278 Views
PS4, Xbox 720...
Post by adrean
16 Replies, 488 Views
Best 5 video game...
Post by adrean
5 Replies, 320 Views
What have you been...
Post by FPSMadPaul
16 Replies, 434 Views
Best strategy game for...
Post by Jinty.Maginty
7 Replies, 389 Views
Need Help w/ NEW...
Post by IzzyOwnsYouAll
8 Replies, 401 Views
2 profiles, deleted...
Post by ame8199
5 Replies, 321 Views
1. l Maximus l - 15,769
2. Variation-XBA - 13,473
3. laughs - 13,207
4. mattgame - 13,012
5. Soda Jones - 4,423
6. Nato King-XBA - 4,119
7. Sam-XBA - 4,111
8. Ainokeatoo-XBA - 3,676
9. Fargoth - 3,569
10. Silent-XBA - 3,409
11. SpaceGhost2K-XBA - 3,212
12. DocHoliday78 - 3,089
13. vman - 2,351
14. thAshAdyOne - 2,327
15. Bakeman - 2,076
16. Kamshaft-XBA - 1,859
17. Symmetric-XBA - 1,639
18. Unreal - 1,550
19. Enamelized420-XBA - 1,288
20. Steeps5 - 1,079
21. Motoko - 917
22. EMX - 802
23. tsrdawg - 334
24. MoonTar - 290
25. Symmetrics Love - 171
26. scozzard - 162
27. Ricepuppet - 138
28. Alx1138-XBA - 131
29. pierrevincy - 129
30. oddjob428 - 104
31. wasabisabi - 102
32. tacohead - 98
33. Timmy Bauer - 90
34. angeto - 84
35. Floppy Brown - 83
36. phuture 909 - 77
37. Tampad - 51
38. mypainteffects - 49
39. 12buckmafia-XBA - 47
40. blueamcat - 45
41. kaori30 - 31
42. mutha_ucka - 20
43. Ed Hunter - 16
44. The Mattbox - 15
45. Pepsi - 6
46. legend80 - 4
47. DBMB - 2
48. Autn5 - 2
49. benwhite - 1
50. Stellar91 - 1
1. Yellowlab - 121
2. Variation-XBA - 113
3. mattgame - 95
4. Highlite23-XBA - 89
5. Young_Fledgling - 82
6. Sam-XBA - 80
7. Megaherz *RAGE* - 74
8. The Jackal - 74
9. xj74 - 73
10. Shadow20002 - 67
11. CrazyCougar - 66
12. mrmp3 - 65
13. xdragon - 62
14. oddworld20-3000 - 59
15. Silent-XBA - 59
16. Kamshaft-XBA - 57
17. natewebb - 56
18. (ScArab) - 56
19. BlindSniper - 56
20. Marc - 53
21. Whisper - 47
22. Symmetric-XBA - 46
23. Xbox Masta 4 - 43
24. Sharky53 - 42
25. Y2D - 42
26. Lord Vivic - 41
27. JediMasterChief - 40
28. thunder0810 - 39
29. adzmullz1 - 39
30. MixMasta - 38
31. Ninjermy - 38
32. Blind-RazoR - 38
33. Alx1138-XBA - 38
34. kenji - 37
35. DaGameBoy - 36
36. JayMan36 - 36
37. Liquid Gears - 35
38. murken - 33
39. mentat - 33
40. RichVGS - 32
41. 12buckmafia-XBA - 31
42. asammw - 31
43. wweomaniac - 31
44. Folgerboy-XBA - 30
45. BillyDKid - 30
46. George89 - 30
47. pvsurfer03 - 29
48. super_ryu - 28
49. colosso - 28
50. BIGHARV - 28


 
© 2000-2011 XboxAddict.com - All rights reserved. All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Xbox is a registered trademark of Microsoft. XboxAddict.com is not affiliated with Microsoft.
Made in Canada