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By: Nick
Arvites |
| Developer: |
Neversoft |
| Publisher: |
Activision |
| Genre: |
Extreme
Sports |
| Est.
Release: |
October
29, 2002 |
| Posted: |
10-2-02 |
I recently
had the opportunity to play a hands-on demo of Tony Hawk 4,
the latest installment in the extreme sports series, on the
PS2. While the demo really did not showcase the other
characters or stages available, it did allow you to skate
around an urban area with Tony Hawk and see the newer features
in the game.
Apparently,
the makers of Tony Hawk took a few pages out of Aggressive
Inline’s book. People walk around the stages and some assign
you tasks. Also added are spine transfers. If you’re
wondering what that is, you go off a double-sided ramp and
come down on the other side. The biggest plus to the game is
the elimination of the time. Apparently, the timer is removed
from this installment of the game. Hopefully the timer remains
out because it only served to make the game annoying due to
the stop-go feel.
The
controls are the same. Veterans of the other Tony Hawk games
should feel right at home playing this one.
The levels
are massive. The Oil Rig stage from the Xbox version of Tony
Hawk 3 was the beginning. The stage size of the level on the
demo was the size of an average Aggressive Inline
stage. There are tons of things to interact with and tons of
opportunities to perform tricks.
The game
also looks better and runs smoother than the last installment
in the series. It does not seem to be a complete redraw, yet
it is touched up to continue to move with the age of the
system.
Thankfully
the team responsible for the Tony Hawk games noticed they were
slipping (in the minds of not-so-humble critics like myself as
noted in my review of Aggressive Inline) and decided to
implement some changes to keep the series from becoming a
monotonous bore-fest. The apparent (and hopefully permenant)
elimination of timed runs is a great step forward and only
improve the addictive gameplay. Hopefully the game turns out
as great as it is in the demo phase.
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