While many people loved Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, it was clear to see that people wanted a bit of a change, not only had there been three Tony Hawk games with the two minute structure, but many, many clones. For Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Neversoft chose not to tinker too much with the core gameplay that people loved in 3, but altered the structure and removed the time limit, making it more of a free roam with objectives to find on the maps.
However, they knew not to go too crazy with the level designs, which are bigger than most Tony Hawk levels, but not too big, so if you did choose to play a two minute session, you can still navigate a level (instead of being a separate mode, it would have been nice if you could initiate a timer for a high score from the pause menu). There’s a good mixture of fun and realistic locations, with all of them being great to just skate around.
The missions can also be much more varied due to this structure. One great addition is the “COMBO” letters, which is similar to collecting the SKATE letters, but you have to link them all together in one combo. Other missions can also add new set pieces to the levels, helping provide a lot more variety then you’d usually find, with earlier ones being a great way at teaching you how to look for objects you can string together in a combo. Some are easy to fail, but luckily it’s very easy to restart the objective to try again. A few even make you use the skateboard in a different way, such as lying down and forcing you to rely on momentum carrying you, using ramps to build up speed.
There are a few small tweaks to the gameplay. Spine Transfers can be used to jump from one quarter pipe to another behind it. It defies gravity a lot, and is a ton of fun. There’s also a lot more regarding swapping types of grinds and now multiple manual moves, letting you scrape a few more multipliers even when your momentum has died down. Even though you don’t need to trick when navigating between missions, I still found myself doing tricks and combos constantly because of how fun it is.
The create-a-skater is decent, and there are some really fun characters like Eddie from Iron Maiden (who are also on the phenomenal soundtrack) and Jango Fett, who can gain extra height with his special move. Another much appreciated change with the characters is that you can swap characters within a single career instead of having to restart everything, there are even some skater-specific challenges to unlock later on.
Pro Skater 4 does have some issues – the levels themselves feel a bit static and could have done with a few more interactive elements, but it’s still a phenomenal game that ended the main series of Pro Skater games with a massive bang, before the Tony Hawk games started going in other directions. It’s an immense amount of fun to play and every moment – even the few frustrating challenges – is satisfying.