So, I come home from school one day, and the furniture has been moved around a bit. The computer is missing and the desk has been moved. There's a big white cube with a silvery keyboard and a see-through mouse that's all one button coming from it. It plays CDs. It plays DVDs. It lets you make your own movies and burn them to blank discs. It seems like it can do anything. Mom says it's called an eMac, and it's our new computer. I had never seen anything like it. I was obsessed with all the cool things I could do with it and all the little ways it was different but familiar to the old Windows 95 we'd been using as the family computer for years.
But of all the things I could do with it, I couldn't install any of the PC games I had on it. I'm not sure if this is still really a problem, but back in the day if you bought a game for PC, it didn't work on a Mac. You had to buy a completely different version of the game to play it. I realized that it was kind of like the difference between a PS2 and an Xbox—a PS2 game wouldn't work on an Xbox even though they were both basically DVDs. So even though I had a bunch of games for the Windows 95 or my dad's work laptop running Windows XP, I couldn't install them on our new eMac. Mom was probably pretty happy about this; if I'm remembering right, she got the eMac because she was picking up more freelance writing work.
But just because we didn't have any games for Mac, that didn't mean the Mac didn't have any games for us.
For some reason, the eMac came pre-installed with two games. One of them was Deimos Rising, which I genuinely had to look up for this post because it is abandonware ephemera. My mom wouldn't let us play this game. After looking up gameplay footage I genuinely have no idea why. It's not particularly violent. There's no blood and gore. There's not even really suggestions of death. It's vertical shooter, often compared to Xevious. It's got funky 3D renders of sanitized spaceships for you to shoot down. It's the sequel to a shareware game called Mars Rising, which is exactly the same kind of game. I think my mom must have thought it was a Doom clone based on the title because upon reviewing the footage I feel like it's a step above being told not to play 3D Pinball: Space Cadet.
But the other game on that eMac was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.
Here's the thing: if mom was going to ban me from playing either of the two games on that eMac, letting me play Pro Skater 4 but not Deimos Rising was absolutely the wrong choice. Pro Skater 4 was effectively my gateway drug to Jackass, South Park, hip-hop, punk rock, ska, and even straight people porn. I played this game a couple years after it came out when I was in middle school so I was like right on the cusp of realizing I could google search the name of the porn star they got to record voice lines for one of the characters. For the crime of inadvertently introducing me to ska music, my mother's sins are truly unforgiveable.
That being said, Pro Skater 4 is both the best Tony Hawk game to on-ramp into the series with but the worst game to start from if exploring the back catalogue. Pro Skater 4 is where they ditched the strict time limit arcade format of the first 3 Tony Hawk games and entered the open-world era used for much of the franchise after that point. The open-world format is probably better recognized for the two games which came after Pro Skater 4, Tony Hawk's Underground and Underground 2. Gone were the two-minute score attacks and trick challenges, replaced with a series of parks with funny people with weird problems asking you to do crazy stunts for money. And I'll be honest, I think it holds up extremely well.
The thing about Pro Skater 4 is it's so big that I truly have to encourage you to seek it out for yourself. What it is and what it encompasses deserves a lengthy video essay which I straight up don't have time to make. Going through and replaying it again, I was so impressed with how expansive each level was and how much stuff to do there was. It wasn't all cheap thrills (unlike THUG2), it's still a highly technical game. It's a blast to just jump in, and it's accessible enough that you can fumble your way around this first level and more or less figure out how to play the game if you skipped the tutorial. But there's actually incentive to play the tutorial, because there's money there.
One of the things I admire so much about this game is how purposeful everything is. There's no abundance, no bloat, only exactly as much as there needs to be. This goes right down to the tutorial, which is its own unique area of the game with its own collectibles. You don't just get money in this game for completing missions and whatnot; you also have to find it scattered throughout each level. And there is exactly enough money in the game to buy and unlock everything, including character customization items, bonus characters, extra levels, bloopers and interviews, everything. If you want to have the complete Pro Skater 4 experience, you truly need to complete it down to its bones.
Luckily, I think the game does an excellent job of guiding you along that path. You will naturally get better at the game the more you play it. This is one of those games that gives you everything you need to improve at it, it's just a matter of dedicating the practice time. I think if the franchise had stopped here it would be going out on the highest possible note it could have.
Now, I actually played this game for this blog last year, but the thing is that shortly after I finished playing it, they announced Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 for all current-generation consoles. I thought I'd put off writing this post until it came out so I could experience what I hoped would be the best version of the game. And here's the thing: it's not a bad game by any means. But it's just not the same.
Not only are a good amount of maps left out of the Pro Skater 4 version, but the open-world mission structure has also been replaced with a score attack system comparable to the first 3 Pro Skater games. As many reviewers have noted, it's more of a re-imagining of Pro Skater 4 than a full on modern port. That's not a bad thing. They've also gutted the soundtrack and replaced it with more current music, with only a few songs from the original Pro Skater 4 soundtrack returning. I think what this signals is that you shouldn't approach this remake as the authentic Pro Skater 4 experience, but one built from the ground up into essentially a new game with familiar locals. If you really want to you can extend the score attack style timer to an hour long, which is more than enough time to meet all the stage goals. But because each stage leans more into the same overall pattern of goals, it loses a lot of what make the original Pro Skater 4 special. It's not bad, it's just not for me.
Other games I've loved from 2002:
Shantae (GBC), Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus (PS2), Ratchet & Clank (PS2), Metroid Fusion (GBA), Metroid Prime (NGC)
No comments:
Post a Comment