Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 Review
I'll just start this off with saying this game is complete trash, as many of you already expected. I did not purchase the game, merely rented it for 4 dollars.
(I've highlighted the main points of this in bold, in case you didn't want to read it all.)
When I was finally finished with the 7 GB day one update, (which is twice as big as the game itself) I was thrown into the introduction video, showcasing all the pros in the game. It was the usual THPS fashion and I liked that part, it took a huge downward spiral after that video though. The main menu just plays the same video in the background and I got the feeling it was causing issues for the menus to load because there were some awkward pauses just to create and load a new profile save. I take a glance at the main menu and see a few options, Play being number one, so no career mode to speak of. Next, I see Customize Skater, and this was a huge let down for me. Definitely the most dumb thing I've seen so far in my ten minutes of playing. You don't get to create your own skater, you heard me right, there is no New Skater slot for you to start off fresh with a completely stripped down dude with no stats and basic tricks. You have to pick one of the pros, or secret characters, to override their appearance to make your own. Not only is this ridiculous, but the customizing options are limited as fuck. You can't even pick and choose between shirts/pants/hats/etc., it's divided into three sections, and not even what you would think. There is 'Head' 'Body' and 'Board,' you can't even have a certain shirt with a different pair of pants, they are just set outfits you have to pick from. I couldn't even change their tricks after overriding one of the characters. I already knew this game would be trash because of Robomodo, but not even a half-decent custom skater? Fuck you Robomodo.
Next I see on the menu, Create-A-Park, always a classic for the franchise as a whole, I personally think Proving Ground showed the most potential when it comes to this mode on the franchise. Proving Ground let you freely rotate and place objects, where as before you were stuck to a grid and could only rotate objects 90 degrees. First thing I see when opening Create-A-Park on here is five themes, picked one of them at random. After I picked my theme, I see a screen for Park Size with small, medium, and large, and there is another let down. The older TH games would let you customize the park size by moving one side in or out. You could make a slim long park, or just a massive square, you get the idea. The thing with that was, if you made it bigger, you had less space to place more objects, made sense. Since I see these three sizes, I'm going to assume you can place a lot more objects in a small park, and a lot fewer if you choose large. I picked large and the first thing I notice, these fucking themes have a set layout that you just have to work around. I'm talking various heights, slopes, walls, and you can't delete any of this stuff if you don't want it there. I'm browsing the objects and there is a nice variety to work with. You can change the skins on most of the objects, mainly to fit the theme you picked, but you can choose between any of them. After picking a ramp and moving it around, I was stuck to the same 90 degree grid as previous TH games had. However, you can place objects wherever you like, at whatever height you want, (No merging though) you can make the ramp a few inches above the ground or go about 20 feet above the park. After placing a few things here and there, I tested it to see how it ran. Having just placed 5 objects and skating around, I saw a severe frame rate drop, and not due to the pieces I added. It just runs like shit even with nothing in it, I deleted the objects and tested again, and the same thing occurred. It goes from roughly 60 frames to about 15-20 the entire time. After experiencing that, I just had to exit and start to see how the actual game played, because everything thus far was so fucking disappointing, and infuriating, that I couldn't take it anymore.
If you thought that wasn't bad enough, oh boy do I have a treat to share with you. The gameplay is the absolute worst part of this game. I'm sure about 80% of you don't like the TH games to begin with, since we're all fans of skate, but this is the biggest dump on the franchise that I have ever seen. (I'm not including Ride, or Shred, for obvious reasons.) The few of you that do enjoy the TH games like I do, this is even worse than THPS HD. They managed to fuck up the physics of the game as a whole even more then before. The controls are wonky and unresponsive, they suggest you push with RT for fuck's sake. You can just hold A and go, like in older titles, but when you play the tutorial, they tell you to use RT. Your skater has super human powers and ollies ten feet in the air, even with the slightest tap of the A button, this is before I have even boosted any of my stats, by the way. (I understand the THPS games are arcade styled, but you could ollie at a reasonable height in the previous titles.) Not only is this weird for the game itself, I can't even imagine how hard it would be to properly set up a custom park to work with it. The animations for combining tricks, even just the tricks in general, is so horrible to look at. Their idea of a Wall Plant animation is just a one foot tailgrab, and that doesn't look good at all. There is only two speeds to this game, either go fast as fuck, or not at all. There is also frame rate issues within the normal levels. The game would suffer texture pop-ins even in enclosed areas, such as the berrics. You can NOT get off, or on, your board in this stupid game. Why the fuck was this a good decision to not put that in? Then again, I'm questioning why they released anything at all with how bad everything works. Next thing that comes to mind is the special meter, if you want to do more unique tricks, you have to push LB to 'activate' it. You can't just start doing those tricks until it's activated. Another thing that sucks ass about that is, you can't activate it until you land a decent combo. So if you're capable of maintaining a combo for multiple minutes, you're screwed on doing special tricks until you land once and start again. This is the part that is completely unexpected and unwelcomed. Once you activate special and start doing tricks, everything gets a 'special form' to it, rather then doing commands to use them. Back in the previous titles, if you got special, you had to input two directions and a button to use them. This game just changes a single kickflip to a triple flip if you're special is active. Another brilliant idea from the guys at Robomodo, once you think you've taken enough shit from this, they just throw more at you. There is also random dumb effects like Shaun White Skateboarding has, not to the extent of a circle bursting from your board every time you land, but you'll see sparkles and a wavy trail behind you, here and there. The soundtrack was fairly average, a few catchy tunes between every third, or so, song. Nothing worth remembering though, probably the best part of the entire game.
edit: I just noticed this from looking at other's reviews, but you can't fucking fall from balance anymore. If you messed up in the older titles and couldn't keep your balance during a grind, or manual, you would bail. Simple as that, learn to keep it straight and in the middle or lose your shit, now the game just ends your combo, but you keep the score. Another thing to add to the shit list of this game. They treat you like you're a toddler, incapable of grasping the concept of the slightest mechanics like balancing, so you get a special participation award, even if you fuck up a combo, with an automatic land, yippee!
I went into this expecting shit, as is typical Robomodo fashion and got exactly that, this game lets you down in more ways you can count, and goes even further then that!
As Adam Sessler might have rated it, I give it 1 half-assed cash grab...out of 5. (If you wanted a 1-10 scale, I'd still say 1, yes it's that bad)
