Review: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 (PC)

When the menu loaded in for the first time and CKY’s “96 Quite Bitter Beings” started playing, it felt like I was transported back to high school, playing THPS on my buddy’s GameCube in his parent’s basement. The nostalgia hit hard, and I loved it.

Review PC Specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
RAM: 32GB DDR5
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070
Monitor: 32UWHD 165hz

Key Features:

• Crossplay Multiplayer
  • Includes 9 modes including two new modes; HAWK Mode and Public Free Skate
  • HAWK mode has players hide their HAWK pieces throughout the map and opponents race to find their opponent’s pieces.
• Create-A-Park
  • Special Pieces
    • Boost Pads Turbo Pads, Friendly NPCs, Aggressive NPCs, Gil Pits, Music notes
• Customization and unlockables
  • Secret Skaters
  • Skater Apparel
  • Game Mods
    • Trails, post process effects, stats, skater size

Performance:

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (THPS) isn’t a game that requires you to squeeze every frame possible out of your machine BUT it absolutely is a game that would be ruined by stutters—I’m happy to say that with the above specs, the game ran nearly flawlessly. During my testing and review, I only had one crash and no stuttering or performance issues. The game felt buttery smooth during my entire playthrough.

Gameplay:

Timers, parks, challenges, skater progression, kickflips.

Truly, to me, the gameplay loop is extremely fun and addictive. Maxing out your combos, grinding more than a middle school dance, pausing and restarting levels; it’s a ton of fun! I especially enjoyed finding all the skater point upgrades throughout the maps and maxing out my skater as high as possible (yes, I played as Tony). Once I got his rotation high enough, I was able to pull off the legendary 900 regularly.

The game felt smooth as ever too. That feeling of effortlessly transitioning to a bowl or rail is just so good.

I approached most levels the same way; I went for the S-K-A-T-E to (re)learn the area, went for the high scores, and then the secret tape. It never felt boring, and the grind was extremely enjoyable, especially now that I can restart the level in about 2 seconds vs waiting for the venerable GameCube to reload the level from the disk (thank you SSDs).

Once I got about halfway through THPS 3, I dabbled in the park creator. I have fond memories of playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on PC way back when and using the park editor to create the funniest named gaps my friends and I could think of. I haven’t matured a bit. It’s a great feature and for hardcore fans of the series, you can find a lot of replayability here.

The more I played, the more addicted I got. This became evident while playing a match of Warzone with my friends one night. I attempted to grind a curb in Warzone and quickly realized that Warzone should have a crossover with THPS. Imagine the chaos!

Sound/Music

The sound effects are punchy and familiar—just what I would expect from this franchise. I especially liked the subtle music slowdown/rewind effect that happened after a fall.

Speaking of music, I think there’s something for everyone here. THPS introduced an entire generation of players to music they hadn’t heard before. I was happy to hear many familiar songs and, in my opinion, there were enough new songs and genres that the music never felt stale.

Graphics:

It looks like a Tony Hawk game—it’s not going for the most realistic looking graphics but it looks great! On PC there is plenty of customization and I would recommend getting your settings dialed in so that you’re hitting a minimum of 60FPs

Final Thoughts:

Whether you’re new or returning to THPS, THPS 3+4 is a great way to play! The meticulously recreated levels, redesigned THPS 4 gameplay, multiplayer, challenges, and park creator will keep you grinding away.