Rad Rat Video’s POV on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4

 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4

We should also talk about the Playstation 1 version. When I reviewed Pro Skater 3, I checked out the PS1 version of it, and was surprised by how great it was. It’s an excellent way to play the game, and is worth checking out even now. So I was hoping that Pro Skater 4 would also be good… but it doesn’t really survive the transition to the new format really well.

For starters, all the people and cars and stuff are gone. Of course, I didn’t really like the bad acting and stuff in the first place, but it’s almost worse just having floating icons. At this point I would rather it just be like the old games and have all the challenges at the same time with one timer. There are a lot of technical limitations here, or maybe just laziness. For example, when you start a challenge, you might have triggered it from the wrong direction, and so you’ll be facing the wrong way every time you restart. So if you have to collect COMBO letters or hit a certain gap, you’ll have to turn around right from the starting line. It can make some of this stuff a lot more annoying than it needs to be. 

Plus, trying to find stuff is a lot less fun on an original Playstation. Trying to collect flyers and trash cans and stuff isn’t so bad in 720p widescreen where you can move the camera around, but in low resolution on the PS1, it’s just a chore. The camera is a lot closer to you (and you can’t freely move it), there’s draw distance to worry about, and it’s just tough to make out what stuff is.

Another downgrade is the contests. When you start one, you just keep on rolling from wherever you were. There are no special ramps that go up or anything. It might as well be another high score challenge.

There are a couple more differences too. Instead of collecting cash, you collect stat points and songs for the soundtrack. They made Kona a night level, and mixed around some of the other levels too. All in all, I would definitely skip this one.

Every PS1 Skateboarding Game reviewed

Number 8: Tony Hawk 4. One of the worst Tony Hawk games for a long time. You won’t see one match this for a couple of generations. As the series made it onto the PS2 and Xbox, they were adding a lot more features like reverts, spine transfers, and a timer less level layout. But the PlayStation 1 still had a large install base so they would try to port them down and this time, it just didn’t work. They pushed the PlayStation well beyond its limits and because of that, there are lot of glitches and awkward gameplay. The challenges are kind of loosely based on the real version of the game, but there’s so much missing that it’s impossible to tell what’s going on. If you didn’t play the PS2 version, you’re just kinda collecting random things without any explanation. And it’s harder too because the draw distance is a lot worse and things get lost in the pixelation. One of the worst things about it though is not being aimed in the right direction. Start an event and you’ll end up pointed how ever you happen to be when you started the challenge; the C in COMBO might be behind you. Overall, there’s no reason to play this.