Piston Hyundai
Member
Alright, we had a page about how good F.E.A.R. is, so now let's start a page off with this.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is one of the top three or so worst games I've ever played, being in company with games like Postal III. I've never seen a game with such blatant disregard for the games that came before it, which is a testament to the complete inability of the men and women at Robomodo. I'm a little too heated to really organize my thoughts, but I'll try my best.
I was immediately greeted with Activision and Robomodo title cards that took ten times as long as it should've to play through because it wouldn't stop hitching. In this case, I'm one of the lucky ones: Xbox One users have the game crash on this screen if you're signed in on anything but a guest account. From there, I was hit with some terrible Radio Disney-tier music, which I sought out to disable almost the second it started. I went on over to the options screen and saw this:
Those are all of the options you have in the game. No options to disable tracks (which has been in the series since the third game) or skip tracks (which was in the first game over sixteen years ago) that you don't want to listen to. There were a few tracks that I enjoyed, which is perhaps even more of a shame because I couldn't tell you what they were. The song titles/artists seem to be nowhere to be found besides the credits.
From there, I picked one of the pro skaters to play with since the create-a-skater function is painfully bare-bones, as anyone who's seen the Quick Look is aware. I've played every mainline game in the series, and I recognized two people, neither of which were Rodney Mullen (those who aren't aware of his importance can just imagine a Twisted Metal game without Axel in it or something). Now, I understand the importance of trying to capture a new audience by having skaters that younger players would be familiar with, but wasn't one of the points of being Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 was to appeal to nostalgic fans of the series? Shouldn't you have more of the classic skaters from the series, or at the very least the guy who invented the motherfucking kickflip and has been in every game since the second one?
Regardless, your choice in skater doesn't really make much of a difference besides your available tricks which, for the first time since the original game from over sixteen years ago, you cannot customize. Instead of each character having starting stats in line with their real life counterparts, everybody starts at zero. This is shit not only because it makes every skater feel the same, but it also makes the progression move at a snail's pace. You earn a stat point every time you get Pro or better on a goal, which means you have to get Pro on 128 different goals to max your character out. This isn't too much of an issue since you can still pick which stats you increase like a lot of the older games, and the only stats that matter are your manual and rail balance. I thought that the spin stat would also be important, but your rotation is miserably slow no matter how full that stat is (you're doing well if you do a 540 spin with it maxed out).
After choosing Tony Hawk if only because he can still do the 900, I went to the first stage in the game, the Berrics, to do the tutorial (but not until I had restarted the game, because it seemingly refused to start up at first). Due to the fact that it's a real-life skate park, it's not exactly suited for the type of arcade gameplay that the later Tony Hawk games offer. As a result, it feels like a major step down from the starting levels from the rest of the series, with there being one opportunity in the entire level to do the Spine Transfer. The rest of the levels are equally uninspired, even the ones that play off of classic THPS level designs. The one level I did somewhat enjoy appeared to be a last-minute addition, since it didn't appear in the level list pre-patch and is nowhere to be seen in the game's trophy list, which includes trophies for progress in every other level in the game. Also, it seems like the performance of the game got worse with each level, with the Asteroid Belt stage running at half the framerate that the Berrics did.
There's major issues everywhere you look in this game, but the biggest one is by far the gameplay, which is at the lowest point the series has ever seen. Everything they added has made the game worse. You no longer start and stop on a dime because of the new acceleration system, which maps acceleration and braking to the triggers. Top speed can't be achieved by holding the jump button anymore, which gets very irritating in the racing missions. Game mechanics are seemingly at odds with each other, with the new automatic wallride preventing you from using the wallplant from any angle besides 100% perpendicular to a wall. The new Slam mechanic is easily the worst addition to any of these games. I am honestly at a loss as to why it exists in the first place. What benefit does the player gain thanks to this ability? What problem does it solve? Why was it mapped to the very worst button they could have chosen? The slam being mapped to the grind button leads to countless combos cut short, and makes grinding a high rail or ledge that requires a wallride to reach a god damn nightmare. Even without all of these terrible features, the standard gameplay just feels terrible. Whenever I did well, I felt like I was doing so in spite of the game. The flow of the gameplay loop itself is also the worst it's ever been, being bogged down by countless menu issues and downtime. In the older Tony Hawk games, when you had completed your objectives, you could end the run immediately and move onto other goals. Here, when you've reached the high score, your only option is to wait out the clock. It makes doing well feel like a punishment. On top of that, the standard "start, down, X" retry procedure is now "start, down, down, down, x, wait a bit, x, wait a bit." It's not too long in and of itself, but with how poorly some of the goals are designed, the time adds up.
The goal design of this game is absurdly repetitive, with every level seeing the same few goal types with the only change being how well you have to do with each one. These include the standard SKATE/COMBO letters, score/combo attacks, "Tony Says" challenges which are basically Simon Says with tricks, and Hawkman (a Pac-Man style collection mission). Hawkman was also seen in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, and it also sucked shit there. This iteration is somehow even more frustrating than the last, however. I spent almost an hour on the second level's Hawkman challenge because of the piss-poor hit detection of the pellets and the strict time limit that demands perfection. It was the most frustrated I've been with a game that I can remember. It didn't feel like I was at fault in most of the cases where I was met with failure in the game, and that is one of the worst things a game can do.
Plenty's already been said about the game's aesthetic, so I'll just say this: The game feels lifeless. All of the skaters are mute and do the same canned animations, the levels lack any real setpieces or vibrancy, and bails have absolutely no weight to them. It all gives the game a distinct lack of the personality present in the Neversoft titles.
I think that about covers it. It was just a miserable experience for me from start to finish. That said, I'm glad that I played it in the sense that I was able to get a first hand account of the damage that has been done to the series. While I don't wish ill of any of the individuals that work at Robomodo, I hope that Robomodo as a collective is put out of existence as soon as they can. They've proven before that they can't make a good Tony Hawk game, but this one has come about as close to ruining everything as I think they could. Maybe they could make some decent Call of Duty maps.
Oh, and you can just do the 900 on flat ground over and over and over again.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is one of the top three or so worst games I've ever played, being in company with games like Postal III. I've never seen a game with such blatant disregard for the games that came before it, which is a testament to the complete inability of the men and women at Robomodo. I'm a little too heated to really organize my thoughts, but I'll try my best.
I was immediately greeted with Activision and Robomodo title cards that took ten times as long as it should've to play through because it wouldn't stop hitching. In this case, I'm one of the lucky ones: Xbox One users have the game crash on this screen if you're signed in on anything but a guest account. From there, I was hit with some terrible Radio Disney-tier music, which I sought out to disable almost the second it started. I went on over to the options screen and saw this:
Those are all of the options you have in the game. No options to disable tracks (which has been in the series since the third game) or skip tracks (which was in the first game over sixteen years ago) that you don't want to listen to. There were a few tracks that I enjoyed, which is perhaps even more of a shame because I couldn't tell you what they were. The song titles/artists seem to be nowhere to be found besides the credits.
From there, I picked one of the pro skaters to play with since the create-a-skater function is painfully bare-bones, as anyone who's seen the Quick Look is aware. I've played every mainline game in the series, and I recognized two people, neither of which were Rodney Mullen (those who aren't aware of his importance can just imagine a Twisted Metal game without Axel in it or something). Now, I understand the importance of trying to capture a new audience by having skaters that younger players would be familiar with, but wasn't one of the points of being Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 was to appeal to nostalgic fans of the series? Shouldn't you have more of the classic skaters from the series, or at the very least the guy who invented the motherfucking kickflip and has been in every game since the second one?
Regardless, your choice in skater doesn't really make much of a difference besides your available tricks which, for the first time since the original game from over sixteen years ago, you cannot customize. Instead of each character having starting stats in line with their real life counterparts, everybody starts at zero. This is shit not only because it makes every skater feel the same, but it also makes the progression move at a snail's pace. You earn a stat point every time you get Pro or better on a goal, which means you have to get Pro on 128 different goals to max your character out. This isn't too much of an issue since you can still pick which stats you increase like a lot of the older games, and the only stats that matter are your manual and rail balance. I thought that the spin stat would also be important, but your rotation is miserably slow no matter how full that stat is (you're doing well if you do a 540 spin with it maxed out).
After choosing Tony Hawk if only because he can still do the 900, I went to the first stage in the game, the Berrics, to do the tutorial (but not until I had restarted the game, because it seemingly refused to start up at first). Due to the fact that it's a real-life skate park, it's not exactly suited for the type of arcade gameplay that the later Tony Hawk games offer. As a result, it feels like a major step down from the starting levels from the rest of the series, with there being one opportunity in the entire level to do the Spine Transfer. The rest of the levels are equally uninspired, even the ones that play off of classic THPS level designs. The one level I did somewhat enjoy appeared to be a last-minute addition, since it didn't appear in the level list pre-patch and is nowhere to be seen in the game's trophy list, which includes trophies for progress in every other level in the game. Also, it seems like the performance of the game got worse with each level, with the Asteroid Belt stage running at half the framerate that the Berrics did.
There's major issues everywhere you look in this game, but the biggest one is by far the gameplay, which is at the lowest point the series has ever seen. Everything they added has made the game worse. You no longer start and stop on a dime because of the new acceleration system, which maps acceleration and braking to the triggers. Top speed can't be achieved by holding the jump button anymore, which gets very irritating in the racing missions. Game mechanics are seemingly at odds with each other, with the new automatic wallride preventing you from using the wallplant from any angle besides 100% perpendicular to a wall. The new Slam mechanic is easily the worst addition to any of these games. I am honestly at a loss as to why it exists in the first place. What benefit does the player gain thanks to this ability? What problem does it solve? Why was it mapped to the very worst button they could have chosen? The slam being mapped to the grind button leads to countless combos cut short, and makes grinding a high rail or ledge that requires a wallride to reach a god damn nightmare. Even without all of these terrible features, the standard gameplay just feels terrible. Whenever I did well, I felt like I was doing so in spite of the game. The flow of the gameplay loop itself is also the worst it's ever been, being bogged down by countless menu issues and downtime. In the older Tony Hawk games, when you had completed your objectives, you could end the run immediately and move onto other goals. Here, when you've reached the high score, your only option is to wait out the clock. It makes doing well feel like a punishment. On top of that, the standard "start, down, X" retry procedure is now "start, down, down, down, x, wait a bit, x, wait a bit." It's not too long in and of itself, but with how poorly some of the goals are designed, the time adds up.
The goal design of this game is absurdly repetitive, with every level seeing the same few goal types with the only change being how well you have to do with each one. These include the standard SKATE/COMBO letters, score/combo attacks, "Tony Says" challenges which are basically Simon Says with tricks, and Hawkman (a Pac-Man style collection mission). Hawkman was also seen in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, and it also sucked shit there. This iteration is somehow even more frustrating than the last, however. I spent almost an hour on the second level's Hawkman challenge because of the piss-poor hit detection of the pellets and the strict time limit that demands perfection. It was the most frustrated I've been with a game that I can remember. It didn't feel like I was at fault in most of the cases where I was met with failure in the game, and that is one of the worst things a game can do.
Plenty's already been said about the game's aesthetic, so I'll just say this: The game feels lifeless. All of the skaters are mute and do the same canned animations, the levels lack any real setpieces or vibrancy, and bails have absolutely no weight to them. It all gives the game a distinct lack of the personality present in the Neversoft titles.
I think that about covers it. It was just a miserable experience for me from start to finish. That said, I'm glad that I played it in the sense that I was able to get a first hand account of the damage that has been done to the series. While I don't wish ill of any of the individuals that work at Robomodo, I hope that Robomodo as a collective is put out of existence as soon as they can. They've proven before that they can't make a good Tony Hawk game, but this one has come about as close to ruining everything as I think they could. Maybe they could make some decent Call of Duty maps.
Oh, and you can just do the 900 on flat ground over and over and over again.
