Back on my bullshit again, it seems...

I have a kinda weird relationship with this game. I love it a lot, but I consider it to be a weaker entry in the series. I just have tons of little issues. The huge amount of tutorials, the annoying roadblocks, the fact that there's almost too many moves you can do. Just lots of minor annoyances. Doesn't help that this was my first time playing a THPS game on the GameCube, which that d-pad was not made for games like this.

But... despite all that, I really love the Ethos of this game. It almost feels like the most Authentically Punk game in the series! Yes, some of the crude 2000s humor is an eyeroll, but the rags-to-riches story is really endearing with some fun characters and plays around with the history of the sport in an interesting way. Plus, it's still a Tony Hawk game! It's tons of fun! These levels are top notch. Sure it's not a true open world, but I respect the ambition a ton.

Overall, it's hard for me not to love a game in this series. The only Neversoft one I don't love is Proving Ground. So even a weaker Tony Hawk game still fucking rules.

I think it's pretty easy to take for granted how much official controller support can add to a game. I'll give you an example: Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 on the Steam Deck is an unmitigated nightmare that, at best, is barely playable unless you have a mouse and keyboard plugged in. But the version for the Nintendo Switch works surprisingly well. Further case and point: anyone who has ever tried rebinding the buttons on a controller so they could play any of the three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games developed and released between 2007-2009 probably came to the same realization that the developers of System Shock 2's canceled Dreamcast port did: there just aren't enough buttons on any controller for this shit, man. Unless you want to sacrifice your ability to lean around corners, turn on your flashlight, change the firing mode of your weapon, or have quick access to healing items, trying to play the PC versions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with a controller is inadvisable until further notice.

Like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3's Switch port, what drew me to the Legends of the Zone Trilogy bundle currently on sale for the Xbox and (surprisingly) PlayStation isn't that I had never touched these games before, but I was genuinely curious to see how a franchise that has never had official controller support before would handle the task of running on console hardware. And surprisingly, it works. It works about as well as you would expect it to, anyway. It is still a little finicky in some regards: sensitivity between aiming regularly and aiming down sights differs to a distracting degree, the weapon wheel doesn't pause or slow the game while you're using it, and navigating the inventory without a cursor slows things down, which isn't aided by the fact that using the inventory, too, does not slow or pause the game for you. Some of that clunkiness aside, though, these control fine and are perfectly adequate ways to experience the vanilla versions of these games if you've either never played them before or simply want a reason to play them again. They've added achievements to all three games, as well, which is always a nice touch. Multiplayer modes aren't present, but it should be common knowledge by now that multiplayer doesn't tend to carry over when an older game gets re-released unless it was a notable part of the package (and here, it was not).

This is sort of reminiscent of that time they ported Half-Life 2, FEAR, Far Cry, and Doom 3 to seventh-gen systems to accommodate for the fact that neither the PS2 nor original Xbox could manage stable/struggled to manage stable ports of either, except they've done it two console generations later. I don't really mind that though; I find this sort of re-release nostalgic. On the subject of this being released on last-gen hardware rather than current-gen systems, perhaps they didn't have the resources for that? That distinction does make this feel a bit lazier than it should to prying eyes, but on a PlayStation 5, it emulates just fine, looks great in 4K, and feels fine enough with a DualSense. I am a bit bummed that they didn't consider porting this to the Switch, but I can see where technical barriers and monetary incentives would have prevented such a port from happening. Oh well, maybe next time.

There are a couple of interesting differences I've noticed so far:

- The Energy Drinks you'll find in-game now have the branding/product placement that they apparently did in the original European releases.
- They've done their due diligence, and the Chernobyl in Shadow of Chernobyl is now spelled in Ukrainian fashion, with an O instead of an E. They've also gone ahead and done this for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, so it's not too surprising, but what is is that they've gone ahead and edited the original menu images to accommodate for this change.
- As has been common with these re-releases since Whoopi Goldberg introduced the Looney Tunes (probably), there's a disclaimer in here about these games being historical artifacts (no pun intended). While you could point to something like the use of the R slur in these games for that disclaimer, the most likely explanation for what they're referring to is that these games have never had a particularly positive outlook on the Ukranian military. Preeeeetty bad timing for that, I'd say.

ETA: Easily the roughest bit of transition from PC to Consoles is that I don't think any of these ports allow you to quicksave. Given that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has always been firmly in the camp of "quicksave every five minutes in case you die instantly", this means that your manual saves will fill up quickly. There's also the fact that these being straightforward ports means that there are no quickslots for any game that isn't Call of Pripyat. Prepare to be sorting through that inventory a lot just to use one energy drink! That being said, I stand by my assessment thus far: these are accessible ports that mostly work out of the box. If that's what you're looking for, it's forty bucks well spent.

ETA2: Lowering my score for this by a star. Everything I said is true, but the faithfulness of these ports also extends to their notable technical shortcomings, including crashes, bugs that have never officially been patched, and inconsistent spawning/despawning. These games are still playable and fine, evidenced by the fact that I just spent 22 hours in Shadow of Chernobyl with very few issues. But if you're coming in expecting these ports to have been polished for consoles beyond their controls and presentation, they're somewhat disappointing, although the likely explanation is that there might not have been much to work with.

THPS4 has all the marks of a new and improved sequel. Better movement (though it takes a little to get used to), new hub based level design that allows you to get better acquainted with the levels, and new mechanics that further deepen the potential of banging out nasty combos.

However...

This novelty doesn't last forever. Much like THPS2, the latter stages of the game turn into complete fucking nonsense, but this time it's a different kind of nonsense. Rather than braindead level layout, the issue this time is exhausting goals that literally suck the soul out of you. And that's not even mentioning the Pro specific goals. A good majority of them are complete nonsense they threw together with glue and scotch tape and said fuck it because they need to get back to dicking around.

I understand Neversoft had to pump these games out like Phillip Rivers and his wife pump out children, but you weren't there when I was trying to hit 1.5 Million points in Chicago. I have never in my life felt more defeated than when I failed over and over again over the span of nearly four hours trying the same exact line over and over again only to get fucked by the balance meter or just jump in the water and ruin the whole fucking thing. That shit genuinely broke me. I don't ever want to go through some shit like that again in my whole life.

Even still, I can't bring myself to hate this game.

Yes, Neversoft may as well have barged in my room and beat the shit out of me with the way this game had me tweaking, but that pro skater charm is still there. It's not quite as magical as THPS3, but their distinct humor and creative direction is still very apparent in this game. The soundtrack is the worst of the series so far, but that's saying essentially nothing because there is still so many bangers in this game. And how can you not love the bonus movies? Just guys being dudes drinkin beer and playing ping pong and shit. Could be why the goals suck ass actually but that's not the point.

Even if THPS4 totes the best gameplay in the series so far, I can't forgive the sins they committed with the level design in this game, especially since the levels themselves are actually a blast (except for Chicago) (fuck Chicago). The joy in improvising and landing sick lines has never been better, but unfortunately some chump over there wants you to do some nonsense bullshit that somehow manages to be frustrating, difficult, and wildly unfun all in one package that's gonna have you begging Tony Hawk himself to end your suffering.

I usually don't like when people say this, but you're better off playing the levels in THUGPRO.

Jango Fett is fucking awesome though.

The rare example of a game that is worse than its predecessor, despite being better in every way.

You name the aspect when it comes to the act of playing the game is better--the combat is more fun, Hawaii is beautiful and incredibly fun to traverse, the minigames are as wonderful as ever in addition to bringing back most of the ones from the last game, the the ost has a bit more sauce to it, its just wonderful to play.

But, the word of the day is pacing. This game suffers heavily from poor pacing in every aspect just as well. You get your overarching objective early into the game...and it doesn't change until about 70% of the way in. It quickly gets tiring as you walk to another place so the bad guy there can tell you the princess is in another castle. Eventually it gets so infuriating that they have a random npc come out of nowhere to give you her to end the plot and start the endgame. The final boss comes out of nowhere and is generally completely uninteresting, they knew it too because they added other silly bosses in the lead-up to him then shunt you over to Kiryu for the "serious" finale.

This in itself isn't bad, but it just really makes Ichiban's storyline even more unsatisfying that it already is. Ichiban has no relation to this guy or anything going on, he's just Here To Beat Up the Bad Guy. The main antagonist faction is also kind of questionable from a sensitivity perspective--the obvious intention with them was to pull from the Unification Church and the Shinzo Abe assassination, but by transporting that to America and making them worship an indiginous religion it comes across in rather poor taste.

Kiryu's plot fares better--I have never played the old Yakuzas before 7, I don't like that sort of action game, but it definitely sold me on his character and history, and it got really emotional in the sense of a man looking back on his life. When it wasn't focused on the Big Conspiracy of the game, the small moments were really good and brought some of the humanity of 7 back.

The pacing bleeds into the gameplay too. The game has a really awkward difficulty curve, its never like too hard or anything, but you'll just randomly hit spikes after sometimes arbitrary missions where the level requirement jumps up by 5 or 10. And the way they pace your currency is the game is just poor, they went for a strictly tiered equipment system this time around, with each tier of equipment costing exponentially more than the last. But the actual tuning of money in the midgame is poor--the game asks for significantly more money than it gives you to keep concurrent with gear through the middle of the game, which just meant I sat there undergeared through it until we hit the lategame that showers you with infinite wealth.

Tying into it is an uninteresting and mostly just annoying upgrade mat system, with the capstone mats being gated by long grinds or doing the fishing gacha minigame for an hour.

They also don't unlock the job change system until like 50% of the way through the game, which is absurd and really only messes with the curve since you're already significantly into the game before you can play with the system. I really don't know what they were thinking here.

Altogether, the tedium of the story and pacing just really brought it down for me. It's undeniably a great game, but its less than the sum of its parts.

The first of the Activision O2 games to capitalize on THPS's rampant success, SPPS is alas, a game that takes THPS's gameplay system of two minute runs and a goal list to complete almost wholesale, and it doesn't really apply here. Coupled with a special trick system that makes absolutely no sense (seriously, half quarter moves, what is this, Street Fighter?) and it's a game that's an interesting curio, and nothing more.

Has an awesome final level based off a canned indoor ski resort in Anaheim that truly is too good to be in this game.

The first two THPS games were as much a culture as they were a videogame. Although I was a wee sk8r boy in my teens, these games coming along at the height of that was perfect timing. Giving me accessible content to this culture that up until then was only really seen in magazines or the odd TV show and niche sky TV channel. And it was a culture embraced by those around me too.

And the games were awesome. The only thing is, I could never beat them. I don't recall unlocking Roswell on the first game (though I might have done, as once 2 came out, 1 was more of a novelty to revisit for a few minutes from time to time). I definitely unlocked the chopper drop level on 2, but only ever saw skate heaven thanks to a cheat code.

20 odd years later, I'm no longer an edgy teen rocking baggy jeans and listening to most of the bands off the soundtrack. However I have been enjoying the remake of these landmark, formative videogames. And for the first time I've 100% completed all of the challenges. And I put this down to the addition of the revert. I remember getting up a fair amount of combo points in the original THPS2 thanks to the addition of the manual function, but as the revert wasn't introduced until 3, I never got too many big combos, and I could never get the sick scores in the later levels. Nor did I get gold on the skate parks. The revert changed everything and I'm stringing together 100,000+ point combos at a time, making those goals much more achievable.

Much like Crash and Spyro before this, its good to see that not too many liberties have been taken in the updating of the ps1 classics. It feels like the originals. It adds a feature that makes it even more fun and I had a great time again.

I haven't played any of the fancy new sims that are around today, but I don't think that skateboard games have been bettered.

I got our old PS2 working again, so I decided to pick a couple titles up from a retro games store near me. The guy at the counter told me this was one of his favourite games and said he was excited to know what I thought of it. That’s probably going to be an awkward conversation.

The good first, it’s a damn incredible looking game for its time. It honestly looks better graphically than some early PS3 games, and it’s running at 60 frames a second? Damn the PS2 was a good ass system. The general feel of hitting things is good, and the ragdoll physics are pretty funny. Kicking dudes into groups of other dudes like bowling pins was always fun, and watching your character do a cartwheel and flop around when he dies always made me laugh and softened the blow a bit. Other than that though, this game isn’t very good. Movement is sluggish, made worse by an automatic lock-on that means you can never really control what you’re aiming at. The timings for attacks and combos are very weird and unreliable. You basically have to throw the whole combo before the first hit even lands, so you can’t cancel out of it if it doesn’t connect. But on top of that, this is one of only a handful of games to use the dualshock’s pressure sensitive buttons for some combos and attacks, and I’m not talking some complex Tekken-style inputs here, I mean basic attack combos. They’re hard to pull off correctly at such a fast pace, so fighting is really awkward with you just finnicking around, trying to get the correct inputs and throwing out wrong moves left and right. All of this I found led to a lot of cheap deaths where I’m finnicking around trying to get combos to connect properly, and I just get screwed over because of it. It was especially bad during the boss fights. In addition to that, the game has a leveling system where you get points to spend on your stats, except you only get points for enemies you land the final blow on, so you have cases of your AI partners stealing your kills on you and you not having enough points to keep up with the escalating difficulty curve. A particularly frustrating incident was when I was fighting the first boss Echidna (who, by the way, straight up uses Eddy Gordo animations), and after dying to her again and again and again, I get her health down, about to land the final hit and….Volt kills her. There goes my big bonus.

This isn’t a particularly good game, but if nothing else, between the hilarious ragdoll physics and that incomprehensible, out of left field Nomura writing, I was laughing for much of the time. And it’s short. Even with all the trial and error and frustration, I beat the campaign with Sion in like a night.