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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 was the best entry in the series
- Thread starter Grand Theft Scratchy
- Start date
- Opinion
fart town usa
Member
THPS3 is where I lost interest. The game focused too much on combos with THPS3 and I really disliked the levels.
THPS2 is peak THPS for me.
THPS2 is peak THPS for me.
AndrewRyan
Member
3 is my favorite but mostly just played on one custom level I made. It was a fun sort of therapeutic experience playing for 10-15 min listening to tunes and stinging together tricks.
GriffinCorp
Member
I agree... 3 is my favorite in the series.
MiguelItUp
Member
In 3 I think they really nailed the gameplay, but the soundtrack and stages could've been better IMO. When I think of stages and OSTs I automatically think of 1 and 2, 2 more so TBH. I played that Dreamcast port like a damn madman.
as someone who used to skate 100 years ago whenever i played this game it was never about stringing together huge convos and getting g lots of points. i usually would just find a small platform somewhere and try and do technical manual combos or some other tricks that felt like real skating tricks and real skating in general. my hope was that as the series progressed it would become more realistic.
unfortunately they just milked the format as a cash cow ala CoD. ea skate came a long and it was a step in the right direction but still not that great. hopefully skate 4 is a lot like actual skating and not too much fantasy and unrealistic stuff.
unfortunately they just milked the format as a cash cow ala CoD. ea skate came a long and it was a step in the right direction but still not that great. hopefully skate 4 is a lot like actual skating and not too much fantasy and unrealistic stuff.
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SpongebobSquaredance
Unconfirmed Member
Soodanim
Gold Member
Tony Hawk games were fun because they were arcadey fun, not in spite of it. Why would I care about a kickflip simulator whose legacy is ragdoll bails when I can grind around a foundry racking up an unending combo in a series whose legacy is a generation of fun memories?
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Lucifers Beard
Member
Unpopular opinion I imagine but my favourite by far was Project 8. It was crazy hard but I loved it.
Osaka_Boss
Member
Despite respecting that the simulator market exists, I feel this reasoning destroyed some genres, more specifically the racing one
Obviously more people know how to drive than skating, and that's one of the reasons why realism pushed arcades fun down the rug the way it did, but for some reason Tony Hawk and extreme arcadey sports were extinct because of the brown TPs era and open world GTA galore
I just hate how some people want to dictate what is good or not, more specifically what happened when SKATE released and people only deemed that Tony Hawk old formula was s* because skate exists. Different strokes for different folks
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just saying what i thought of series. you're welcome to enjoy what you want my dude
some people may take that route but not sure where you're getting that from my post. i just said i prefer realism in skating games over fantasy, that shouldnt invalidate your opinion. personally i would never have that much fun playing THPS with the way it is, but i'm not telling others they shouldn't enjoy it.
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Ev1L AuRoN
Member
Tony hawk pro skater 2 on PS1 was the best
Osaka_Boss
Member
Not really condemning you for it. Just saying that people (not you) promoted this hate towards THPS back when SKATE released, as if people cannot have their own opinions. Arcade or realism, it doesn't matter. What matters is that these trends will never leave both sides in a 50% 50% of market share. Nowadays, if it weren't for Forza Horizon and a few indie games, Arcade racers would be DEAD, and they were for many years.
The market wasn't reacting well to them in a transition from 480p to full hd, as people were spending more money on the consoles, so they demanded more realism. The same happened to extreme sports games
We may be reaching a point where we reach a more even scenario
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CamHostage
Member
Yeah, for me, it's comfortably clear as far as perfect balance of stage design, speed, challenge, difficulty, visual style, trick variety and combo lines, pick-up-and-play appeal, multiplayer, etc., that THPS3 is the pinnacle... but, if somebody wanted to debate which one they loved the most or have the best memories of, I could have that conversation and empathize with their favorite.
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MacReady13
Member
YES! I loved THPS3! Don't get me wrong- the original 2 are absolute classics, but that move from PS1 to PS2 was HUGE! Imagine an era where we had these Tony Hawks games AND SSX out at the same time! What a time to be a gamer. Now if only EA would rerelease SSX/Tricky so we could play these god damned games again! And Activision- rerelease THPS3 for fucks sake!
Larxia
Member
It's my favorite one too! and I'm a really big tony hawk player.
The 360/PS3 version of Project 8 had issues, mostly its poor framerate, but the rest of the game was incredible. The atmosphere, the visuals, the map and its level design in general, the game design where you had an "open world", but not the kind of regular open world with tedious quests everywhere, here you had environmental challenges in every corner and they all were super interesting to do, it was always nice finding new ones.
The animations in this game are also in my opinion still the best made in any skateboarding game ever, and the physics, the feel of weight when you landed from an ollie, it was just amazing.
It's really a shame that the game is stuck on ps3/360 in pretty poor condition, it would be really nice to be able to play it again with a perfect framerate, on modern hardware. There is ps3 emulation but it's not quite there yet performance wise on this game.
I cannot choose the best between 2 and 3. 2 is more iconic, tighter level design and has an overall better soundtrack. 3 has better gameplay, fun and bigger levels and has Ramones and Motorhead.
Underground is not that far with its story mode, graphics and excellent varied soundtrack.
I don't think I've played 4.
Underground is not that far with its story mode, graphics and excellent varied soundtrack.
I don't think I've played 4.
Larxia
Member
This is... sadly incredibly true.
I don't really understand the hate for arcade, especially because it really often seem to be biased because of some kind of... elitism maybe?
I always see people claiming that Ea Skate is better than tony hawk because tony hawk is dumb and easy in comparison, and that's extremely far from the truth.
Sure, if you were to port the exact same mission from skate, into tony hawk, it would most likely be easier to complete in tony hawk, but a game design doesn't stop there, is this really where people draw the line and stop their analysis?
That's like saying an arcade racer is easier than a sim because you will complete the same track faster in the arcade game compared to the sim one (I did read a comment like this once, for real).
The arcade games were made with their fast paced / crazy gameplay in mind, so the whole thing and its challenge is designed accordingly, we won't ask you to do the same thing in tony hawk and in Skate, because Tony Hawk will obviously push it further since it can allows that thanks to its crazyness.
What's also "funny" is that most people claiming that skate is better because it's "harder" because of more realism, are most of the time casual players, and I don't mean that badly, but they just play these games casually, so why even starting to compare the difficulties and pretending one is harder? I think it's probably because since one is more "realistic" (realistic is still a big word for EA Skate), they think they are better players when pulling off some basic stuff, because it's slightly more complicated than in tony hawk, but they just stop it there, and don't think about the additional depth you can have in the arcade games thanks to combos, long term progression and such.
I do like EA Skate too, it's nice for free roaming mostly, it's a different approach, but the skill ceiling is just really not there in comparison to stuff like Tony Hawk, and it's the same for Steep, if you compare it to something like SSX, it's not on the same level. Both offers are nice, but the arcade one clearly offers more long term challenge and progression for people who really are into it, while in games like Skate or Steep, you will stop getting better after only a few hours, because it's not made for that.
I'm really sad the arcade genre died, especially when it's because of biased reasoning.
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RoboFu
One of the green rats
Speaking the truth!
CamHostage
Member
THPS1 is a breakthrough classic, and if all we ever had was just the demo of that one stage, THPS Warehouse would still be one of the all-time best games ever. However, most people would say that the linear stages drag it down (though those are fun in their own way.) And then THPS2 is an improvement (impossibly so,) but it's a little uglier to look at (pre-remaster) and although Venice is a treasure, Hangar just isn't Warehouse.
But still, respect.
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SpongebobSquaredance
Unconfirmed Member
Maybe it does run on better Xenia. The original ran better on 360.
NeverYouMind
Member
I personally consider Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x for the XBOX to be definitive. It has the levels and music of THPS1 (my personal favorites) and THPS2 with the mechanics of THPS3. It also has the characters and multiple costumes of THPS2 for each skater with 80's Tony Hawk and Spider-Man returning. The only oddity is Private Carrera is replaced by Trixie, but it's a minor misstep.
Of the originals I would have to go with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. It really nailed the handling and acceleration of the skateboard along with wall rides. It also had a ton of secrets and extras. I really loved the Create a Park mode. It had a park after dark theme and you could make it really narrow with great variations in verticality to create a surreal level or even a race stage.
Of the originals I would have to go with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. It really nailed the handling and acceleration of the skateboard along with wall rides. It also had a ton of secrets and extras. I really loved the Create a Park mode. It had a park after dark theme and you could make it really narrow with great variations in verticality to create a surreal level or even a race stage.
Larxia
Member
Performances for me are slightly better on Xenia, but only by a small margin because Xenia it totally gpu dependent, most of the emulation is done through the gpu, and I have a GTX 1080, it gives me around 40 fps with 90% gpu usage at 720p, so... yeah.
Maybe a more recent gpu can do 60, but the game crashes after a few minutes of gameplay anyway.
It also looks much better on rpcs3 thanks to high resolution and such. It's possible to get a locked 60 fps on rpcs3 but you need an intel cpu with TSX support which really boost the performance on this game, but newer cpu and motherboards don't support it because Intel removed the feature because of some instability / security issues.
So right now there's really no perfect way to play it on PC unless you have the exact specific lucky hardware for it. Proving Ground runs a lot better, on both emulators, which is surprising since it has a bigger world and all, maybe it was better optimized.
Soodanim
Gold Member
It wasn't supposed to be an attack on you (I'd have quoted). Although it was partially a response in the sense that I elaborated on Spongebob's gif, it was more about the general downfall of the THPS series and rise of Skate and its clones. Those games definitely have their fans, and that's valid, but they were never for me. 10 minutes in demo of Skate 1 was all I ever needed of the series, compared to years of THPS fun.
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SpongebobSquaredance
Unconfirmed Member
ah... okay damn, I got an i5 3550k with a GTX 1060 3GB and 16GB of Ram. Probably won't run either Proving Grounds and P8, but I haven't tried PS3 and 360 emulation yet.