Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 Review

tony hawk

As a long time Tony Hawk series fan you can imagine my excitement when I heard a new main line game was to be released. The nostalgia came rushing to me as I remembered fond memories of hanging out with friends and seeing who could do the craziest combos and who could find those hidden gems scattered throughout the game. As the games release grew closer and closer I realized that I haven’t heard to much about it and began to be concerned. Release day came and not a single review had come out so I decided to wait a few days to go pick it up just to see if I heard anything good or bad about it. After hearing a few people say some good but mostly bad things I decided now it was time to go pick it up and see for myself how Robomodo did with this storied franchise.

Upon putting the disc in I was prompted to update the game with a patch that was just a big as the game on the disc which was the first red flag. Update all done, I started up the game eager to dive in. Now this is how my first half hour went. The game booted up and immediately crashed back to the dashboard. Thinking, that’s weird, I booted it up again only to get to the classic Activision title screen and have it crash again back to the dash. Third attempt I started the game and it made it all the way to the main menu screen and another hard crash back to the dash occurred. At this point I thought to myself, did I really pay money to not be able to play this? I again started the game and was able to start the game finally. Going through the tutorial it took some getting used to because I had played the EA Skate series so much but it certainly felt like the classic Tony Hawk at first. Getting through the tutorial section I hopped into the game itself. First thing I noticed right off the bat is the texture popping was horrendous. The environment textures were coming and going. Couple that with the controls were not consistent and the glitches that plague just skating , then I was hit with huge frame rate hills and valleys. From smooth to unbearable almost instantly and with seemingly no reason. After a little free skating I decided to try and do a challenge. Started the first challenge and was again kicked back to the dashboard from yet another hard crash. Fast forward a few minutes to when the game allows me back in and I make it through the challenge and thought to myself, ok now this feels like classic tony hawk. I had a nice smile on my face and enjoyed the challenge. Went to play the next one and now the game didn’t allow me to pick another challenge. Frustrated I quit back to the menu and rejoined and was then able to play a few more challenges. By now you can see the picture that I have painted. The game over the course of me playing it continued the entire time on this same frustrating path. How this game passed QA has me baffled.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 tries to give its seasoned fans a nice simple throwback to the good old days. The problem is that it is 2015 and this type of game doesn’t hold up well and there is a severe lack of content. Mix that in with all the bugs and glitches and you have a flat out broken game that misses that mark it was attempting to hit. I wanted so bad to love this game and maybe revisiting it after its fixed might help but paying 60$ for this product is not something I would encourage.

2/10 Stay Away

Reviewer: Cory J. (twitter: Fiction315)

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