Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 | The Completionist

the Tony Hawk pro skater series had one of the biggest falls from grace the gaming community has ever seen in its earliest days the games were lauded as not only some of the greatest of their generations but as some of the greatest sports games ever made the first was a massive success that was so innovative that it practically made its own extreme sports sub-genre and inspired a countless number of spin and ripoffs and from developer Neversoft the hits kept rolling Tony Hawk 3 & 4 were arguably the pinnacle of the series most of the kinks have been worked out the consoles were able to make it look great and the team was at the height of their creativity and then a few years later EA skate dropped and the tide had shifted there was a new sheriff in town an Activision felt it was time for a change and that's where the problems began they had switched over to developer Robo moto and attended to reboot the series to become more tangible like they're responsive analog stick controls of skate from there we ended up with a bunch of messy motion controls pointless peripherals and subpar programming was Activision right in thinking that skate was just so much better than the original Tony Hawk formula that it was worth scrapping almost entirely for a bunch of desperate gimmicks the only way to find out is to go back and check out the franchise at its best when I complete Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 hey everyone and welcome back to another brand new episode of the completionist so today's video is probably going to be demonetized because the fact there is so much copy written content in the Tony Hawk series so if you want to support us today we'd really appreciate it you can go over to patreon calm at one videogamer and you know help us out and support us today you get your name in the credits you talk to us on discord and there's giveaways and all kinds of fun stuff so check it out we really appreciate your support so big fans of the show know that Tony Hawk pro skater 2 is one of my favorite sports games of all time and it's been a long time since we've seen another entry from that series because YouTube sucks and I said you know what screw youtube today I'm going to take some time and complete another classic that I absolutely love today we're gonna complete Tony Hawk pro skater 3 let's begin yes [Music] in the late 90s skateboarding and other extreme sports had staked its claim in pop culture and unless you grew up around then you really can't tell how huge the sport actually was every boy had a skateboard in middle school kids were constantly showing up to school with Roadburn bruised tailbones and broken wrists I can't think of many fads that caused so much injury as skateboarding during the Golden Age of the X Games everyone was looking to cash in on that that's when Activision approached Neversoft at the time Neversoft had only a few games under its belt the most notable being a surprisingly decent action game starring Bruce Willis but apparently it was enough for Activision to entrust their concept for a skateboarding video game and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was born I think it is safe to say that it did anything but beefed it the original game was critically adored and it flew off the shelves just as fast as the birdhouse t-shirts and wet willy stickers it was sold next - it wasn't like any other came out there there were skateboarding games before it absolutely titles like skate or Die and California games had the scoring elements but just never lasted into the 3d era and then there was too extreme for the PlayStation but the skateboarding was really just a ripoff of Road Rash oh and how could I forget the arcade game top skater an enormous piece of crap that was to skateboarding what ddr is - dancing and i say that as a guy who loves ddr Tony Hawk had the attention to real skate technique smashed together with frantic arcade action after its success Activision pulled an EA and asked for a sequel every year for the next eight years and surprisingly they were fire with Tony Hawk pro skater - the team outdid themselves and then what it was thought impossible Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 was loved even more both of those games are considered to be two of the greatest games ever made for the PlayStation and the PlayStation do and that's right by myself for now ready to complete the Citizen Kane of the action sports genre I gotta be honest here folks I am flippin excited when I laugh play there as a simple non completing civilian I never got over the thrill of racking up a combo for as long as possible while reeking immature havoc all over the place Tony Hawk pro skater 3 is a very straightforward and fun game it is a series of maps each with its own objectives and hidden collectables none of which are very difficult to find and accomplished but I plan on completing the campaign with each and every character and there are a lot of the scanners comes with grabbing each objective ranging from the obvious high score crows score and six score thresholds to finding the skate letters to the more absurd like pulling someone's frozen tongue off of a light post and starting an earthquake in Los Angeles in addition each character has tons of stat points and hid and deck designs to find the points themselves can be used to boost things like speed and grind balance and the secret decks will give me some cool designs for the skaters boards so thankfully speaking they aren't just useless collectables since they are scattered over the stages more difficult to reach locations level familiarity is essential which shouldn't be too hard since like my grandparents in Atlantic City I'm gonna be visiting these places again and again and again and now it's really going to test how much I love this game I will have to do what are essentially the same tasks repeatedly with each of the skaters and one thing I've learned through completing game after game over the years is this monotony is the real enemy that more often than others is the reason most games get a finish it here on the show staying fresh is key or the gameplay has to be so good that it becomes a fiending addiction and I don't have much more room in my life for another addiction I already have my collection of creepy 1920s medical ads but it's just you and me now Tony I know at least up top it's going to be a kick-ass time I am as the kids say psyched stoked hell of props home skillet and other various late 90s and early 2000 slang bling bling y'all bling bling [Music] the Tony Hawk franchise focuses on creating a simple premise encased in a deep respect for the extreme sports culture it doesn't take the culture seriously at all but that's what it was all about let's all have stupid fun and pull it all off with an easy overlooked technical Grace and never soft pretty much nails the landing Tony Hawk pro skater 3 and the rest of the series up until Tony Hawk underground is no substance all style it's not really about anything it's the classic arcade system there isn't any narrative objective Tony has no motivation there is no through-line and the closest thing to any storyline here is a guy who wants to get an axe to break into a house he gets it the classic hero's journey it doesn't really need some brilliant screenplay underneath it in fact the bare-bones fun for funs sake lack of narrative only lends itself to the immature of slacker Punk jackass feel at the game nails let's just get together and have a stupid dope time Pro Skater 3 is all about the culture of skateboarding's heyday every inch of it is injected with skate paraphernalia and sophomoric humor there is never a serious or genuine moment in this game in fact it kind of insults you a lot of the time people will make fun of you if you bail and the game outright calls you stupid if you go out of bounds it's like that loveable well that's somehow it gets away with it for a bit then after a few years he gets unbearable kind of like a Tony Hawk series yeah some of the gags are a little hacky and probably works better on thirteen-year-old Gerard but overall it's still pretty funny maybe you just had to grow up in the time when the cast of Jackass were just boisterous young men trying to destroy themselves but Tony Hawk pro skater 3 is just so that era and his cell looks pretty good this skaters have a pretty high polygon count so I could easily forget this game came out very near to the PS 2's initial release and with the motion capture technicians of each trick and bail looks smooth and badass it's only when you get up close to the NPC's that the game really shows its age look at those Neversoft girls those gorgeous triangle babes I love the lady with corners but each stage still looks great all of them are intricate and full of character they all feel big without feeling empty Tokyo is vibrant and neon Canada is snowy and expansive they all feel like their own unique animal arranged incredibly well each the levels have a great flow and variation in the level itself it feels like there's a lot to do and explore and right when you think you've seen it all you'll stumble on a hidden area and you're back and finding as many grinds and combos in that area that you can graphics design and tone are all things that this game nails really well but when you imagine Tony Hawk to someone who's played them chances are the first thing you talk about even above the gameplay is the soundtrack it is the once I decided Tony Hawk 3 was the next game on the completion of schedule the entire office started arguing over which Tony Hawk soundtrack was the best in my opinion the second one's the best they are solidly curated with the most ear wormy punk ska and hip hop of the era and Tony Hawk pro skater 3 makes a solid case for the best in the series it's seriously brought in to my young musical horizons two other genres that up until then have been mostly dominated by Elton John and Weird Al unfortunately we could play more of the songs but YouTube will just flag us for copyright there's a good chance that this whole video will be demonetized so there you go now I'm having trouble figuring out whether or not this is nostalgia even the sounds like the record scratch you hear with each objective description or the thud of my scanner barreling collarbone first is the ground it just fills me with happiness I think the childlike Glee doesn't just come from the nostalgia I think it's because this game is childish in a good way it abides by the themes of the skater dumb of the new millennium crass but slick dangerous but immature smart and idiotic at the same time all I need now are my giant pair of etnies cargo pants some bleach spikes and I'm there either that or I am the lead singer of sum 41 or probably both [Music] Tony Hawk pro skater spawned all sorts of ripoffs Disney Simpsons and others with skateboarding titles that were vague as hell there is even a branded rip off for the razor scooter all this blatant intellectual theft is simply because of one reason Tony Hawk's gameplay is tight as Pro Skater 3 didn't change anything that worked from the previous games it's simply tightened those tools and added a couple of features to huge effect obviously it's all about the dance of the deck as whatever scanner you choose you are tasked with certain missions in each stage and your job is to complete those tasks through whatever grinding flipping and grabbing you see fit each type of move is bound to a button and each combine to the direction to do a variation of that trick so squares your flips triangles grind circles grab and X is the ollie now how you play on the n64 is just a little bit different first you grab the game then you put it in the garbage and by the ps2 version all of your basic tricks look just like the ones they did in all of those overpriced skate videos you got your judo your stale fish your overcooked your frontside shove-it and other increasingly goofy names and then with enough successful tricks your special meter kicks in hit the right input and you will attempt a move of epic proportion they start as the signature moves of each skater like Ronnie Mullins Kasper slide and then as you dig deeper you find grinds like the human dart or the supremely ridiculous version of the manual called the aw yeah did I mention you can customize all of your moves on each person the hash sweet once you've got those down it is time for the real deal damn combos almost every move can be strung together into an endless blur of blunt slides roast beefs and grass bones and yes I didn't make that last one up man it is satisfying Antonio - they added the manual technique and open the door to almost infinite combos then with Tony Hawk 3 they seal the deal with the revert move the revert was such a simple touch but with huge impact just a little hit of art - and your skidder would spin 180 degrees right upon landing from a vert trick with this you can manual out of a vert trick so a combo didn't have to end after a ramp it didn't have to end at all there were so many moments where I completely neglected my objective just so I could keep my combos going I swear I would have finished this game twice as fast if I didn't become a combo zombie every time I got into a rail but watching that score keep ticking up and up and it's just so intoxicating just hit that revert and then grind the curb just one more special magnet one it's just the greatest thrill though this never got old for me among all the completion criteria my favorite was seeing how quickly I could beat the score requirements on each level and eventually seeing if I could beat the score requirements while completing at the other tasks the other objectives are pretty much a cakewalk the skate letters are wisely placed to encourage an epic combo line for collecting them all but as long as you can maintain control they mostly can be retrieved without doing a single trick the hidden tapes also serve as a method to pull the player to some whacked out location usually at the end of a barrage of stunts to reach it most of the rest are just dumb for the hell of it like the surprisingly finicky free-balling challenge all you have to do is knock two decorative balls over their pedestals why it seems like he was just made to fulfill some bet that they couldn't fit the phrase free-balling into a game still it only gets more fun as each skating venue is ingeniously crafted not only do they give you plenty of things to explore and do but they designed in a brilliant way to facilitate combos in the portes you can go through the entire level without once touching the ground it's not easy but it is rad that it can be done in Los Angeles you can grind your way up to a hundred feet into the air and then dive into a quarter pipe for an incredible finish that makes me feel like I'm almost half the man my stepdaddy wishes I was look Steve I'm shoving it I'm pop shoving it Steve sadly nothing is perfect and a few imperfections have exposed themselves now that I've really taken my sweet time with this game primarily the physics they can be pretty inconsistent sometimes the game will be like go ahead and plug directly into this wall no worries let's keep that combo rollin and then other times the game will just say no and Bop me without reason there were several instances where I could try just a simple jump and then out of nowhere my board would just shoot out from underneath me and rapidly ascend to heaven like it was being beamed to the enterprise million point combos ruined by the icy hand of collision detection this doesn't really throw the metaphorical stick in front of my metaphorical trucks but it did interrupt a few of my attempts to nab the more higher six scores of the later levels like Los Angeles and the crews also it's incredibly awkward to stop in this game you have to hold down on the d-pad to stop yourself completely and then uncomfortably pivot towards the direction you want to go now before you post anything in the comments I know a game walking to loop around and proscape my way up to smash that pumpkin but I'm already right next to it and all I want to do is just approach and straight up bust a gourd up in each stage there is one hidden deck that will unlock a new personalized design for whoever you're using and there are five hidden stat points in the first few go-rounds I realize that the stat points index actually change locations on you depending on which person you're using but there are only three variations so once I played enough this became as easy as riding a skateboard with training wheels which if you didn't know it's just another skateboard taped to it collect everything and you will unlock an extra special trick slot which leads me to my final criticism and the one that may keep me from giving this game a good-old completed character variety you see every skater in Tony Hawk pro skater 3 is customizable there's no respectable character creator available the problem is since every skater essentially gets ironed out to the point where they have no weaknesses they eventually become the same you can change and move sets around as much as you want to but your experience is going to pretty much be a carbon copy except with the change of your own personal scale even at their base levels with no changes to their initial attributes there really isn't a noticeable difference between characters other than cosmetically and to unlock everything that's being the game with 21 characters or essentially beating it 21 times with the same character in a different freakin costume each playthrough but hey there's online multiplayer oh come on it's only been 15 years unreal still has their servers up overall Tony Hawk's Pro Skater threes gameplay remains highly addictive and incredibly satisfying the game isn't difficult for the desire to do things faster and for higher scores can keep things very interesting if you are motivated for it there are a couple of technical hiccups as far as physics go and things get a bit repetitive if you're going the distance but if you space out the play instead of the retina burning marathons I go on then the spice will probably stay in the relationship hey speaking of spice oh yeah [Music] Tony Hawk you beautiful bastard you at least after all of that grind no pun intended if there are enough unlockables to fill Bam Margera's pointlessly huge mansion every skater you beat the game with unlocks their skate demo so after you've won you get a five minute video of badass truck mastics in addition there are seven other hidden videos unlocked under very simple conditions including one of the developers having a kickflip contest yes it's as dorky as you think it'll be and if that isn't enough the first ten times you beat the game you have unlocked seven hidden characters and three hidden stages from Tony Hawk pro skater one then each time after that you will unlock a different bonus mode to play with moon mode turns the gravity way down if you want to do three nine hundreds in a row there's perfect balance mode for eternal manuals there's expert mode which makes the landing more difficult and nerfs your jump to a more realistic height so that's really boring and finally for 100% completion you get first-person mode it's actually kind of hilarious to get a first-person perspective on how ridiculously high 420 you get if you feel like giving me and my completion process a giant middle finger and a healthy grind off you can just unlock everything I just listed with cheats yep the things that took me tens of hours to earn legitimately can also be scooped in about a minute and a half with the right code words and I mean everything the characters the movies the levels the stats you know it sucks the most of all I knew that they were there I even remembered the code for unlocking all the decks give me some wood for all that time I was aware that I could just pop those dumb little passwords in and get me some wood or anything else for that matter Real Talk though when I first wrapped my head around what I needed to do to complete Tony Hawk pro skater 3 I thought it would be way more arduous than it turned out to be don't get me wrong it definitely was not an epic adventure with discovery around each and every corner after that first playthrough I definitely knew the deal play through 21 characters over the same nine levels I thought I would get a bit more bored but that's a testament to how easy Tony Hawk makes it to pass the die while I completed Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 there were 38 hours of gameplay 21 campaign playthroughs 23 scape unlocked 945 stat points collected and a pair of adamantium hips that won't lie so mr. Hawk your namesake still stands the test of time and I can safely say that it's just as good as skate maybe even better the gameplay remains tight and rewarding even with its collisions and consistencies the graphics may not hold up but they were definitely an achievement for the time and that sense of humor of the game brings it all together in a cool package but I swear would make some Millennials wish that they were around to see this skateboarding lifestyle in real life today if you spaced it all out Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is a game you will never get sick of I think it's best handled in the quasi Antarctic methods of the punks at the time play it the way you want you the system the man Ryder died like the second one Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 does a great job of featuring all your favorite soundtracks your favorite skaters and creating an enormous world of fun grinding 90s and early 2000s vibes across the board however has a completionist completing the game with every single character and all that fun stuff just kind of makes this fun game a little too long again if I wanted to compete this game over the course and maybe a couple of years awesome but to do it in this fine little bubble and would kind of take all the fun out of it so with that in mind guys I give this game my completionist rating of finish it that's all time you have today guys so please as always let me know about today's episode somewhere on the internet if you liked what you saw hit that like button leave a comment down below on what games you want to see completed right here on the show and hey if you missed last week's video you can give it a click or tap right here it's on Kingdom Hearts chain of Memories keep them arts everyone loves it I love it you love it take a look that's it guys I'll see you next week for the brand new episode of the completionist I gotta Wars coming get ready [Music]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 704,851

Keywords: tony hawk pro skater, tony hawk's pro skater, tony hawk's pro skater 3, tony hawk pro skater 3, tony hawk gameplay, pro skater gameplay, pro skater 3 gameplay, tony hawk pro skater 3 gameplay, tony hawk review, pro skater review, tony hawk pro skater 3 review, review, gameplay, video game review, completionist, jirard khalil, tony hawk 3, tony hawk, skatboarding game, tony hawk video game, pro skater soundtrack, skating, scateboarding

Id: iqO0ARgurSE

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ErdricktheRoto]

Further proof of how big this scene was back in the day was how even Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance had a skate mode where you could control Snake or Raiden shredding on the Big Shell.

[u/roboticsneakers]

Jirard seemed like he had a ton of fun with this one.

[u/Beatlejwol]

Shoutout for mentioning Skate Or Die :D I played the hell out of that on PC!

[u/Dancingtree444]

Took a moment from binging the FireRed/LeafGreen series to check this out lol. TPS3 was one of my favorite games, still regret losing it

[u/roboticsneakers]

This was one of the few games of this style I played when I was a kid and loved it. The other one was SSX On Tour, that was my favorite, I spent so many ours doing every single little things in that game.

[u/PepeTheZany]

Awesome video, and they're totally right on how much of an impact this had on kids and teens back then. I started skating after playing THPS2, and while I never even learned to properly ollie (lol), I still skateboard (well, longboard) to this day.

Not to mention how the games basically formed my music tastes. Ska is still cool! Right? ...right?

[u/andrew7231]

RemasterTHPS games please Activision. People want to play these games again

[u/[deleted]]

I loved the THPS games growing up. I remember when 3 came out and it completely blew my mind. I couldn’t get enough of it. Sadly, I think that was the last good game in the series.

What’s even more sad is the Skate series has completely ruined THPS for me. I can’t go back and play them at all. There’s no challenge and it doesn’t feel like skating to me. Granted. I do still skate, so there’s a big chance I’m looking for more than a game. I wish I could go back to them. But those flick it controls are just too perfect and makes landing tricks so much more satisfying in Skate. Shame we probably won’t ever get a 4th entry. Hopefully Jirard tackles those games in the future. I’d love to hear his thoughts. Thrasher: Skate and Destroy is a must play to.