Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD Review: An Updated Classic

The once great Tony Hawk series is back with Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD. Does it live up to the nostalgia and greatness of the early era or does it falter and stumble? Sadly the game, while still fun, is not as polished as it could have been. Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD is a collection of levels and music from the first two games in the series. It takes the two-minute time limit goals of those levels and brings them into the HD era, exactly two generations later.

The gameplay and control are literally taken right out of the first two games. This is unfortunate, as it leads to some dated controls that are very frustrating to use. It’s understandable to not find later mechanics like reverts, since those would not fit well with the levels. But the controls themselves do feel like they can be updated. Even the wall-ride mechanic is still as hard and frustrating to pull off as ever as it was originally as compared to how it was later made easy to use in the later games. Even though the controls can feel frustrating to use, they don’t take that long to get used to. So anyone familiar with the old controls won’t take as long to get used to them again.

Although the game certainly looks nice on its own, it doesn’t really stand out as being outstanding in the visuals department. The Tony Hawk series has always had a good selection of music to play while you skate to it. This HD remake is no exception, with several songs from the first two games making a re-appearance as well as new songs being used. Unfortunately, it seems that you have no control over what song is currently playing or the chance to change he playlist. This is a big letdown as this has always been a pretty big and standards feature in the Tony Hawk games.

In the end, I can really only recommend this to those that have been big fans of the Tony Hawk video game series since the beginning. Anyone else will likely get annoyed at the dated controls and lack of a level editor and other standard Tony Hawk Pro Skater modes. If you can get used to the dated controls once again, there is some fun to be had here. While nowhere near perfect, the game does offer some fun to it.

Rating: 7/10

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  1. Used to be a hug fan of the Tony Hawk games until Skate came out. They we’re alot of fun but just to un realistic. It say that this is like the first couple of games just better visual quality. It might be fun for a few days but I wouldn’t go out and buy this.