Tony Hawks - a pro skating game (Tony Hawks Pro Skater (DC))

Member Name: pbyron

Product:	Tony Hawks Pro Skater (DC)
Date:	07/05/01 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great feeling of freedom, Nice Graphics, Good music

Disadvantages: Tony Hawks 2 is even better!

Just as I thought sports games on the Dreamcast couldn't get any better after seeing NBA2K, along comes this instant classic! Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is a fantastic piece of gaming fun which is as original as it is clever.

I never really got the hang of skateboards, the only trick I could do was falling off in several different and amusing (to everyone else) ways, but I'm glad to say that this game is far easier to get on with than the real thing. The controls take very little time to master, but there are so many tricks and courses that the game will last and last, it's a game you will always want to come back to again.

The general idea of the game is to skate (no!) while acheiving certain goals, like getting a set number of points or collecting the S K A T E letters dotted around the course. While this is relatively easy on the first few stages, it soon builds up to become a tough feat to complete on the later ones. In the middle of all this, getting certain tasks done (and gaining video tapes through doing them) will unlock new courses, boards and characters. This all adds not only to the length of the game, but also to the feeling of acheivement you get for completing that task.

The two player modes are based around the tricks, usually beating the other player. These are just as much fun as the one player game and mean that even after you've completed that many times, you can still go back and play the game with a freind.

Of course, this game first came out on the Playstation, where it was equally well received and rightly so, but the attention to detail on the graphics in this version and the extra tweaks that it seems to have gone through do make a lot of difference to the look and feel of the finished product.

This game was first recommended to me by a friend, and in turn I have to recommend it to you as it is one game you don't want to miss out on, even with its sequel already out and d
oing even better than the first.

Summary: