Tony Hawk video games are the new Madden NFL

January 2, 2009 by myka

This issue has been bothering me for a few months now and I wanted to get it off my chest.

I still remember how amazing it was playing the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater for Dreamcast (yes, Dreamcast, get off my back, it was amazing.) and it absolutely blowing my mind. Finally a game that made you feel like you were in control of a real skater from the get go, but also with the potential for mind blowing stunts not possible in real life.

Then came Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, and life was good. The graphics were better for the new generation of systems, sure, but the gameplay was also still much improved even for the original Playstation.

After that Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 came along, and blew my freaking mind! How could the third installment in a series still keep the original beauty of the game graphics, theme, music and mechanics, while still adding enough new features to make it a fresh game! It was really a masterpiece.

Then all hell broke loose. Every Tony Hawk game since the third has been a steaming pile of stagnation.

It reminds me of the Madden NFL series. Every year the series would innovate and add new features, until it captured all the basic elements of the real life sport. Then it started to add gimmicks so that it could compete with the other NFL games available. Once the competition was removed due to the NFL being money hungry, the Madden series went to crap.

Honestly, I've lost track of if they've even added any new features at all to the Madden series. Why not just save development time, and charge us $5 each year for new player names on the rosters?

Aaaaand now my point comes around. Tony Hawk seems to be exactly the same. A game series that at one point I'd get excited to shell about $50+ on release day now keeps putting out crappy spinoff after crappy spinoff.

Please Neversoft, take a couple of years, go back to the original series, and release Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. None of this Underground or American Wasteland fake hipster inidie shit nobody cares about. Pack it full of features and the amazing punk rock you had in the originals. Then give us a robust online matching system complete with rankings, and I promise you, you'll have another big hit on your hands.

Clearly I know everything about gaming, so you can trust me (please note sarcasm, but still it's a good idea.)

The only other clear solution I can see is combining the two crestfallen game series....Tony Hawk's Pro Madden Football. Think about a 350 pound defensive tackle riding a skateboard over a 10 foot vert jump!

Hell, I'd buy it just for the clips of the motion capture of Warren Sapp and Michael Strahan trying to do an ollie!

Have a better idea? Hit the comments.

Permalink