E3 2015 - Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 Hands On

It was last year, not long after E3 when Tony Hawk himself had made mention that they were working on a new Tony Hawk game for mobile, then silence. It is not un-heard of for that to happen, but then we got word the game was cancelled and in its place had risen a new Pro Skater title, which was confirmed and then at E3 it was playable behind closed doors and I was given the chance to play it.

Straight out of the gate, the only thing I needed to know was if it controlled like the games of old, as much as I like stick controls, my Tony Hawk history is with buttons and the developers walking through the game confirmed that it has the same tricks and button layout of the old game, but they were also quick to point out there are a number of changes to them as well. I was then given a really nice long tour of some new features as well as some classics.

While I tried to ask many times throughout the demo if classic modes like Horse, or classic stages, or cheats like moon gravity would be returning, the common answer was you will need to play it to see, I was shown levels that take a lot of inspiration from classic stages as well as real world locales. The first stage takes the hangar level and warehouse level and combines them into something new, but with elements of the original pieces. There was a gap, which everyone knew, where you would come down the hill from the start and then you would jump over the half pipe, well the gap is still there though this time it has a new name. It is touches like that, that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 has littered throughout.

The core of any Skateboarding game is controlling the skater and performing the tricks, which thankfully the team at Robomodo have crafted a system that pays homage to the original as well as creating new mechanics to help player’s adapt form gameplay of 10 years ago to what players expect from today’s games. You are now able to move around the world faster by kicking alongside the board, if you want to, meaning you can get up to speed pretty quickly now.

The other area that the team have taken time to make sure is working is the trick system, if you played any of the first 4 games in the series, this will feel at home for you. It took me a few minutes to remember how to do a revert after landing, before heading up a quarter pipe for more tricks. The grinding mechanic has been revised as well, which will allow you to auto-grind if you are placed right, the grind button is now being used to power drop, meaning if you are in the air and you want to get down to the ground, then you can do that fast, even if you are at the height of a simple Ollie, then you can power drop back to earth. It takes some getting used to, but with this new move, as well as the refined trick system, pulling off combos is a lot easier than before, landing them, well that’s another thing.

The team also wanted to ensure that anyone who jumped in from the Underground era would feel at home with some features, while you are not able to get off your board and walk around, thankfully, you can create your own skate parks, with the all new tool. You can drop pieces into place really quickly and with a single button press, drop into the park and start trying things out. If you don’t like something, jump out and change it or remove it, the creation tool is pretty powerful but the key thing is that it's fast. No longer are you going to have to wait for it anything render before you can try your masterpiece, you can simply do it.

Multiplayer has always been a staple of the series ever since the first game in the series, but for a lot of people, online play is just as important, if not more so than couch play and the team have come up with a pretty special solution. When you want to play online, which is not a requirement, you can compete against times posted by other players, but should you want to do something more exciting, you can jump into a free roam style of play, with 7 other players, so you can have a bunch of people jumping and tricking around a stage. But if you and 2 others wanted to try your hand at a challenge, you can all enter it from the game world you’re in, the other players would simply fade away and you would be right do aim for the top spot and once your challenge was over, you would fade back into the map you were on before. No load screens and no dropping matches or kicking people out, a simple and elegant solution to a common problem.

The team behind it and Tony Hawk himself are still working really hard to get everything put together right for the game, including what music will be featured, another key element, and while some people may question about returning to the older games over the more punk themed ones, but to me it was the right call, it is pure Tony Hawk Pro Skater and that is all I need.