Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 Review

THPS3 was Activision and Neversoft’s second attempt to make a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game on Xbox. The graphics aren’t nearly as great as Tony 2X’s, but there still is some great physics and collision detection with the ground. The skateboard actually leaves the skater’s feet in this game, making it seem much more lifelike. The only real problem is the outside people and cars inside the level. The cars look like boxes and the people are just plain horrible.

The sound is probably the best of the Tony Hawk series. There is a great mix of rock, hip hop, and rap to keep your heart pumping as you pull off that 720 Indy pop-shove it to a tail tap curb slide off in to one wheel manual. There is some voice acting attempted in THPS3 making it better, but the acting is bad.

The gameplay is solid as always with the Tony Hawk series. There are many new tricks and combos to learn in the game, keeping you thinking that there is something new to find out all the time. The pause menu has been expanded to include a cheat menu, stat menu for your skater, and trick menu to edit your skater’s tricks. Also you can just end your run and change the level right in the menu which is really cool so you don’t have to keep exiting the level to go to the selection screen.

This game innovates this series by adding new freestyle tricks to make you look better than Rodney Mullen ever could. The 90 goals in THPS3 and many secret characters give you over 30 hours of solid gameplay to unlock everything in the game. It is very much worth the time to stop and play this game.