Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 - Before You Buy

and we're back with another episode of before you buy the show we give you some straight up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games releasing it's me your old pal jake baldino and today we're talking about tony hawk it's back one of my favorite game series of all time if you watched a friday show and it's finally good again straight up we've had a lot of misses with tony hawk over the years most recently with you know the weaker attempt at remastering the first game and then tony hawk 5 which we don't really talk about this bad boy tony hawk's pro skater 1 and 2 here in 2020 this is a revitalization of the original first two games from the ground up you know the first two tony hawk games were the ones that exploded and while personally i think the series moved on to true gameplay greatness with like tony hawk 4 and underground this is still very much a good play at nostalgia everyone played these games they were massive hits and so with that this new version feels absolutely fresh and modern and kind of more in tune with modern skate culture while also at the same time pulling at those nostalgic heartstrings for old fans thankfully it goes far enough in the gameplay department to appease harder core fans who never really left like me who you know we're extremely picky so the gameplay is absolutely up to par with what you'd expect from a cleaned up classic version of the old games straight up it plays much better than tony hawk 5 and previous remaster attempts by a long shot they've based it off of the original design code base which they had access to and it's modernized slightly so it's a little faster a little weightier and more aggressive but still true to feel this is very much an arcade style game i understand and appreciate skate and i know people love skate but this is fun in in a different way you know your muscle memory should return here thanks to all that old control stuff you know manuals manual tricks spine transfers and the revert are all there so you can really combo around a level to your heart's content and for old fans that we're just a bit more casual it's really great that it's accessible with a bunch of options and also just easy to jump right back in like riding a bike you can even turn cheats on from the menu where you have infinite balance you know there's a nice little tutorial too if you've never played and on the more difficult side i am really glad they included the later edition to really gameplay it so you can really combo around like crazy that's where the fun is here you know it really works with the game being faster and a bit more aggressive i fall a lot just because i'm always trying to go bigger and harder and that's where the addiction truly freaking is the way it works is you're able to progress through all the levels of tony hawk 1 and all the levels of tony hawk 2 in separate playlists you know working your way through those classic two-minute rounds finding the secret tape collecting the letters skate going for crazy high scores and combos it's just as satisfying as you remember some of it is a cakewalk and some of it requires some tricky precision and all of it works because the levels are very lovingly recreated and honestly the maps from one and two are some of the best in the series and they're only better now because like i mentioned earlier you have way more combo opportunities at your fingertips the levels all still have most of their hidden nooks and surprises and remembering them and discovering things is kind of like a new layer of nostalgia fun and they all really look good too you know some of the levels are brought to life here and look straight up stunning like the downtown and new york levels and france philly a few others the character models look damn great especially the way they move and they react a bit more to like landing a trick and there's a little bit of a bounce in their body the way the camera shakes ever so slightly when you hit the ground from a vert ramp with a revert little graphical touches here and there just make it solid but the lighting is the biggest thing when the light hits perfectly in something like the warehouse level that's where you really notice that the graphics are pretty damn good and the game is usually super smooth but i did have a surprising amount of frame dips on my ps4 pro at times that was the version i decided to play i wanted to just play it on console like the old days and here and there those frame rate drops were a little disappointing you know it's only on a few maps here and there but it's still worth mentioning what was i saying though uh yeah the maps themselves are great and kind of the star of the show here you know the only one i didn't like here what they did is the aircraft hanger from tony hawk 2. they decided to make it like a clean modern style hanger and it was jarring it just looks weird like really weird it's a very very minor aesthetic complaint and most people aren't going to notice i'm just saying now there is a new level of rewards progression and stat tracking stuff the game is basically tracking everything you do from combos to high scores to spins to kick flips everything and there's all these different challenge completions that you can check off a list and cash in to get experience that levels you up and you get in-game cash to then buy stuff like new skateboards or clothing in the game's shop it's a really satisfying progression loop because it adds an extra new layer onto all this old stuff and it's just good challenge because it pushes you to do and try new things and play all the characters there's a good amount of progression to work through here and i really like it it might even incentivize some players who mostly play street to try doing more vert tricks stuff like that and create a skater returns you can make your own skater and then like i mentioned you can buy clothing and accessories and stuff for them but i gotta say the creative skater mode itself is severely lacking for me personally this was a big disappointment here you can only really have like one body type and a handful of pre-made faces like there aren't sliders so you can't be fat you can't be short or tall and you can't give yourself a big nose or a small nose or anything like that you can't make super crazy characters like i used to love doing and that's a bit of a disappointment here man personally since i looked so generic i had no problem making myself in the game actually pretty accurately but i hope you don't wear glasses or anything because if you try to make yourself in game even with basic things like that you're out of luck i really wish there was more here thankfully they do provide in the amount of skateboard decks and wheels and stuff like that as someone who does at least skateboard occasionally in real life it was nice to see this type of stuff and of course create a park returns as well and it seems fine you know i'm not very creative but i did access some levels made online it's fun to mess around although i will say the level creator is a bit jacked up you know you can kind of just grind on the invisible connecting points between items placed in the environment sometimes so you can just kind of grind on invisible ledges and it it seems really glitchy at points but the creativity on display here is a good use of this this is this is a modern version of that old create-a-park type of thing where you just build a park and show your friends in real life now in 2020 where we don't have any friends we can share them online and the music is great you know they've got most of the big classic songs from the first two games and then they've thrown in some new music as well to fill it out i think the new music really fits incredibly well they made some good choices here and it works for kind of blending the new and old you know you have all this old skater stuff the old generation skaters then you have new younger skaters you have more modern clothing and music that reflects today and it all kind of seamlessly blends together it doesn't feel forced this is such a corny overused freaking phrase i'm sorry guys but like there is there is really something for everyone here speaking of things being here multiplayer is here and you can play the old-fashioned way most importantly split screen you know it was the way to play and it still is and then there's also online multiplayer and after just testing it out a little bit it's simple but effective you know they didn't go like tony hawk five and add some weird modes and complicated and overdo it here it's just a simple rotating group of simple competitive modes and it's short and sweet and i actually found it a bit addictive you know uh probably because it's like the first online multiplayer game i'm actually competent at but still this is a good start i hope eventually maybe they can add some more progression to it other than just getting more cash to buy a new hoodie in the game i know i would just generally like to see a bit more here more options more lobby options matchmaking options stuff like that hopefully that stuff gets added in the future because that's kind of important if this online mode is gonna thrive but we'll see where this goes really i do wish there were more unlockable hidden characters you know the the old games had these classic crazy over-the-top characters i know licensing makes it a little more difficult in 2020 to get people like you know maybe darth maul or jango fett or the guys from kiss you know uh here we just get like a special edition pre-order type thing with the ripper skeleton uh then there's the jack black version of the classic officer dick which is pretty awesome you get that by finishing a bunch of challenges and then there are hidden alien plushies all around the environments and you get them and you get the area 51 alien and there might be more but we haven't discovered them yet so just keep that in mind now the big question of course will they add micro transactions post launch activision has done that before but this all seems fine here i'm glad there's balanced unlockables it all seems to just be fine you know all this stuff the secret characters and easter eggs in the environment is well and good but i wish there was a little bit more personality in the game more secret characters more grit and grime that the old game had it's more of a feel than anything just a personal opinion a personal complaint here of course it's just a little clean and safe those things aside still if you can't tell man i really highly recommend this new tony hawks pro skater one and two it's a great return to form it's not full price it's nostalgic for people and also it's good enough to ride with the big boy competitive players the culture is there the iconic songs are there the fun is there most importantly i really hope this means tony hawk as a video game thing is back big time and i can't wait to see what happens next i hope something happens next but of course this is a before you buy i give you some pros some cons and some definite personal opinion but i want to hear yours down in the comments have you been playing this weekend uh what version are you playing on if you're playing on pc i'd love to hear from you just because we didn't get to test that out who is your favorite skater is it one of the classic skaters have been aged up or is it a new modern skater we can talk about anything tony hawk down in the comments things get a little crazy down there though we try to talk back but if you want to yell at me directly or ask me some questions find me on twitter instagram and my other youtube channel it's all just at jake baldino but thank you very much for watching hopefully maybe we helped inform your purchase stuff like that if we did clicking the like button does help us out we do appreciate that and if you're new consider subscribing maybe hitting that notification bell because we've been on videos every single day but hey as always thanks for watching and we'll see you guys next time

Channel: gameranx

Views: 1,111,925

Keywords: tony hawk's pro skater before you buy, before you buy tony hawk 1 and 2, tony hawk 1 + 2, tony hawk ps4 gameplay, tony hawk's pro skater remake gameplay, tony hawk's pro skater review, gameranx, jake baldino, before you buy, skateboarding games, tony hawk's pro skater high combo, thps 1 and 2 review, thps 1 and 2 before you buy, game review, thps, tony hawk, tony hawk review, tony hawk gameplay

Id: WTmujX5nOJQ

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020