Cliff Notes – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 review Birdman forever
- The remake retains the classic gameplay mechanics and controls of the original games, enhancing the experience with modern polish and new content.
- Changes to the music playlist may disappoint purists, but the new levels and tighter goal structure improve overall gameplay consistency.
- The absence of the H-O-R-S-E mode in multiplayer is a notable omission, yet the game remains a technically adept homage to its predecessors.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 review – Birdman forever
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 – don’t hold out for a Pro Skater 5 remake (Activision)
Activision remake two more of the original PS1 and PS2 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, adding in new content and taking away some of the original music.
Tony Hawk is easily one of the planet’s most affable and unassuming celebrities, regularly recounting tales of his own failure to be recognised in public places and gently refusing to take part in any form of social media outrage. However, despite illustrious early outings, the skateboarding video game franchise that bears his name hasn’t had quite such a mellow ride.
The first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came out in 1999 and up to 2012 received annual sequels that gradually got less and less inspiring. The series’ nadir arrived with the unmitigated disaster that was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, after which things went quiet until 2020’s excellent remake of Pro Skater 1 + 2.
That was made by Vicarious Visions, who also worked on several of the earliest and greatest Tony Hawk games. Unfortunately, and despite the critical and commercial success of 1 + 2, Vicarious Visions ‘merged’ with Blizzard and effectively disappeared forever, leaving development work on Pro Skater 3 + 4 to Iron Galaxy.
Very sensibly they retained the structure and mechanics of 1 + 2, which means you get a broad roster of skaters, both old school and new, along with the ability to play either of the games whenever you like. As in the originals, you start with a single skate park, unlocking the others by completing goals.
These goals are warmly familiar and involve hitting high scores, finding the letters S-K-A-T-E, grinding your way to a hidden VHS tape, and a clutch of other nostalgia-triggering area specific objectives. Once you’ve completed all the missions in a park, a fresh set of Pro Goals becomes available, which will stretch even the most finely honed virtual skating skills.
This is a remake, so technically it’s a completely new game and not just a remaster, but thankfully the finely judged controls and difficulty remain the same. Getting to know how to grind, ollie, and do tricks is just the beginning. Those moves and their button combinations have to be committed to muscle memory before each park’s more esoteric goals become accessible.
Expert, exclusive gaming analysis
Every area has been lovingly recreated to create as many lines as possible. This encourages you to combo tricks together, linking them using manuals – the skateboard equivalent of a wheelie – and reverts, which let you continue a combo when you land from a half-pipe or ramp. With the addition of those two moves you can effectively extend combos indefinitely, provided you have the balance and dexterity to continue chaining further tricks.
That introduces a knife edge risk vs. reward mechanic to gameplay, in that longer combos rack up far larger point totals, but a single bail loses everything you’ve accumulated. While it’s tempting to keep combos going, there’s an enduring counter pull to bank your points before a momentary lapse of concentration makes you lose the lot.
By default, you have two minutes to play each level, nailing as many of its goals as you can within that time, and while you can now extend the countdown to a finger-bleeding hour the games make more sense with the original limit in place. That now applies to Pro Skater 4 as well. It originally shipped with a more open world approach, with new goals acquired by tooling around and engaging fellow skaters in conversation.
All that’s been removed in favour of more traditional upfront goals against a two-minute clock, and the experience is tighter and more consistent for it. There are also a couple of new levels that weren’t in the original, including the memorable Waterpark, which presents you with a network of drained pools and winding old waterslides to grind your way around.
Along with the pre-made line-up you’ll be able to customise your own competitors and levels with create-a-skater and create-a-park. The latter now also lets you add our own goals, giving player-created levels more focus and direction than simply cruising around them, something that left them feeling a little redundant in Pro Skater 1 + 2.
Veterans of the original games may bemoan changes to the games’ music playlists. Song licensing is notoriously tough and litigious, and the fact that there’s still a scattering of tunes from the early 2000 versions – including the iconic introduction accompanied by Motörhead’s Ace of Spades – is testament to Activision’s persistence. And anyway, the additional songs are perfectly in keeping with the feel of the originals.
Nostalgia is fickle and highly personal, making it impossible to please everyone all of the time, as the current owners of the Star Wars franchise have repeatedly discovered. In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, you’ll find a technically adept and atmospherically well-tuned remake, that requires the same dedication to skill learning and tactical exploration as the originals did, while adding a sprinkling of modern extras.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 review summary
In Short: Another excellent remake, in the vein of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, this retains the glorious character of the original games, while adding a coat of modern polish and a smattering of new content.
Pros: Tight controls that demand practise to perfect. Pro Skater 4 works better without its tacked-on open world elements and the new levels are so well designed that a new player would never guess they weren’t originals.
Cons: The changes to the musical line-up might upset some purists and the absence of H-O-R-S-E mode in multiplayer is an unfortunate omission.
Score: 8/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Price: £39.99*
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Iron Galaxy (originals: Neversoft)
Release Date: 11th July 2025
Age Rating: 12
*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one
Tony Hawk is not the only skater (Activision)
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