There are tons of circular grind areas where you can rack up huge points, but none of it feels custom-crafted for interesting combos. They have no character and feel slapped together, like someone was in a hurry. The levels found in Tony Hawk 5 feel like they're about a half-step up from the levels you can create with the game's in-game editor. Over the years, the franchise has produced some absolute classics. The levels themselves are also a huge part of a Tony Hawk game. Unfortunately, this game seems to have a small number of goal types, and these are simply replicated and remapped onto each of the game's different levels.
The goals in a Tony Hawk game are a huge part of what gives a level its character.
Others have you playing Simon Says with skateboard tricks, some have you collecting a whole mess of objects as quickly as possible, and so on. Some of these goals simply ask you to get a specific score. Instead you're dropped into the environment and can trigger goals from a menu (or, when it decides to work properly, you can skate up to an icon in the world and start a goal from there). Most goals are timed, but this game doesn't go back to the traditional two-minute run timer found in the first few games. This means enclosed levels with set goals. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a mess of half-cocked ideas, astoundingly poor execution, and technical woes that layer a little insult on top of injury.Īfter a few years of either going dormant or getting into the not-so-lucrative business of selling plastic skateboard controllers, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is an attempt to return to the goal-based, trick-oriented gameplay of the original Tony Hawk games. But the end result probably couldn't have gone worse. The world probably didn't need another "classic" Tony Hawk game, but I was sure happy to hear that Activision was giving it another shot.