Since Tony Hawks 1&2 is replicating the neck breaking, face planting experience of skateboarding. It should come as no surprise that the game is built around what people are capable of doing on a wheeled plank of wood. But the fun comes from the acceptable breaks from reality. Such as essentially driving up a hill and curving with the pool while in the air, and the over the top ability to grind without wearing out the board.
Tony Hawk has had a lot of ups and downs after they made more than two games. Let's face the music through, the first and the second game in the franchise is by far the best ones. This remaster includes all the original levels and they have all been spruced up. Essentially everything has had an graphical overhaul to bring it in line with modern games, while retaining the original layout. They also removed the pesky floating money, which I freaking love that they did.
Since it is now a modern game I can adjust settings, such as the camera proximity and field of view. Yes I can finally see more, but I can say that 90 Fov is a bit overkill in this case. A couple of slice of life improvements has been added to the option menu as well. Originally codes had to be manually inputted to cheat. Now they are a couple of clicks away, however they did not include the jetpack mode. So the infinite balance, manual and no bail, does not help me completing all the stage goals. After all I still have to reach the out of place V symbols that has been added to the levels and the secret tapes.
On that note, it seem that I no longer has to complete the game 100% with each skater to unlock all the characters. I truly thank the developers for that, but they did include a couple of secret unlocks that requires a fair bit of combing to squash out. Naturally this means a couple of the original inclusions where cut, such as all the various licenced skaters such as Gene Simmens and Private Carrera. All the movies the secret tapes contained are gone as well, so I can no longer watch actual skateboard videos in game. Luckily I have YouTube for that. Officer Dick is still here though, but he could be mistaken for Jack Black, or is he actually Jack Black?
The most disappointing feature is most likely the custom character editor, sure its novel to make woman with a beard, but the selection of faces and body types are non existent. Not quite, just very, very limited. So I wonder why I cant craft myself a morbidly obese skater, or a muscular one. After all there was a cheat code for making skaters bloat up until the polygons burst from inputting it too many times. Face sliders is non existent and all additional outfits has to be bought from the in-game store.
The level editor allows me to build a magnificent skate park from the ground up and share it with the world for better or worse. But there is just one problem with the setup, first of all it comes with a complexity limit, even on pc. This is just irritating and stupid, I'm not playing Tony Hawks on the original
PlayStation after all. Then there is the fact that the spike pit is nowhere to be seen, yes they removed obstacles that can reset the player when they fall into it. Removed features also includes the runny blood soaked letters when face planting hard. A real shame really, once the bail animation is done, the skater just glitches back onto the board.
All the awesome and not so awesome soundtracks are back and they are fantastic, especially from a pesky nostalgia perspective.
It all I wanted from a remaster of a game I grew up on.
https://youtu.be/jxzbGk8bujc
Zaceron signing out
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