Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4

Platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S

Finally. Five years after Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 remastered the ollie-to-kickflip combo of the legendary first two Pro Skater games, its follow-ups get a belated similar treatment. For a while, it looked like the wheels had locked up on getting remakes beyond the first two games; Pro Skater 3+4 was cancelled amid a Vicarious Visions-Blizzard merger. But when a skateboarder bails, they get back up – and with serious Millennial money to be mined from nostalgic PS2 fans, the next two games in the Birdman’s legendary series are here from a different developer team. Do a flip!

While 3 and 4 aren’t quite as classic as the first two games in the franchise, their return in Pro Skater 3+4 proves to be another high-scoring combo of nostalgic joy. Incoming developers Iron Galaxy have stayed close to the approach of Vicarious Visions last time around – giving the games a serious visual upgrade, while keeping the gameplay and level design largely intact. Once again, the resulting levels look how you remember them via rose-tinted memories – in reality, a major graphical facelift. There are some legendary courses here that prove a blast to revisit: the introductory ‘Foundry’ and grind-haven ‘Airport’ in Pro Skater 3; the campus-based ‘College’ and sprawling ‘Alcatraz’ of Pro Skater 4.

The muscle memory players have likely accrued over decades is directly applicable to these remakes.

More importantly, the gameplay has that classic Pro Skater feel – snappily responsive tricks, just-tough-enough goals that’ll have you repeating two-minute sessions to try and crack, and satisfying upgrade options for gear, tricks, and stats. Just as with Pro Skater 1+2, the muscle memory players have likely accrued over decades of gameplay is directly applicable to these remakes – and combo-assisting features like reverts and spine transfers have been applied across both titles. Racking up a stupidly high combo and successfully landing it feels as thrilling as it did 20-plus years ago. (Notably, failing to land them remains just as infuriating.)

For the most part, Pro Skater 3+4 is everything you could want from a rerun of the two games – though there are decisions that will leave purists a little unsatisfied. Pro Skater 4 gets the biggest changes; back in the day, the original game introduced a free-roaming ‘campaign’ gameplay format that allowed players to skate around levels at will, bumping into NPCs who’d offer up goals, a then-groundbreaking shift reflective of the PS2’s processing power. Here, the game has been retrofitted into the classic two-minute-run structure, without the free-roaming element (which likely wouldn’t be as novel today). While it changes the overall experience of how the original game operated, that the gameplay is still classic Tony Hawk means it remains a joy to play. Much of the original music, too, is excised – a handful of songs from the original 3 and 4 remain, mixed in with new songs that at least exist in a similar skate-punk / laidback hip-hop world.

Though a few levels from 4 are lost – likely because they wouldn’t easily fit in the new two-minute structure – there are fresh courses, a welcome roster of contemporary skaters added to the old favourites (including the unlockable return of Bam Margera), and fun secrets to unlock (playable Ninja Turtles!) along the way. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is as addictive as the original games, and better-looking than ever before. Rad! Now, when can we get Tony Hawk’s Underground and Underground 2?