Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
Developers	Neversoft Vicarious Visions Beenox Semi Logic Entertainments, Inc. Babaroga
Publishers	Activision O2
Platforms	Xbox PlayStation PlayStation 2 GameCube Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Game Boy Advance Tapwave Zodiac
Release Dates
First release date	October 23, 2002
PlayStation 2	October 23, 2002 (US) November 22, 2002 (UK)
PlayStation	October 23, 2002 (US) November 15, 2002 (UK)
Xbox	October 23, 2002 (US) November 15, 2002 (UK)
Nintendo GameCube	October 23, 2002 (US) November 15, 2002 (UK)
Game Boy Advance	October 28, 2002 (US) November 22, 2002 (UK)
Mac	August 20, 2003 (US)
Mobile	June 22, 2004 (US, Zodiac)

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, often called THPS4, is the fourth game in Tony Hawk's series. It was released in Japan as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2003, and was distributed by CAPCOM. It was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision for the GameCube, GBA, PlayStation, PS2, and Xbox. In 2003 it was published for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Tapwave Zodiac.

The game, reportedly, would be the last Pro Skater entry in the series (until Pro Skater 5 in 2015), though some took this to mean it would be the last Tony Hawk's game in the entire series. It is the last Tony Hawk game to be developed for PS1.

Gameplay

The game is a departure from the previous three games' Career mode, in which the player had a set amount of time in order to find and complete goals. THPS4 instead featured a Career mode more similar to Free Skate mode, in which there was no time limit to explore the level, and the goals are given by characters found throughout the levels when the player talks to them. Most of them do have a set amount of time to be completed, but this time varies from goal to goal (plus, letting time run out does not end your run; the player just needs to talk to the NPC to try again). This Career mode would be later seen as the Story modes of Tony Hawk's Underground series, American Wasteland, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Proving Ground.

Even though there is no plot in THPS4, levels are certainly placed in a specific order. The game begins in College, which is located in California. San Francisco is in California as well. Alcatraz is located in the San Francisco Bay. Next, we swing by the skatepark, Kona at The Sunshine State, which is Florida, ship over the Atlantic ocean, arrive at the Shipyard, move to London and visit the London Zoo. There is no evidence if this is intended or just a coincidence.

New mechanics and features

New career mode

THPS4 is a milestone in the series since Neversoft refused to use classic "2 minutes run" system. Now players were allowed to skate around freely and choose any goal they want to complete.

Money system

Money system has returned in THPS4. Cash icons are located all over the levels. Unlike THPS2, it is allowed to spend cash on clothes, cheats and videos, but stats and tricks are awarded by goals here.

Network play

THPS4 introduced new online game modes:

• Score Challenge - first player to hit the score limit wins
• Combo Mambo - highest combo wins
• Goal Attack - first player to complete all goals wins

However, it got rid of Control Zone and Keep Away game modes from THPS3.

Pro Trick Objects

Unique in THPS4 - each map provides up to seven skate objects that can be toggled by player. Usually it's a kicker or a quarter-pipe, but some maps provide more complex constructions.

Animals

THPS4 was the first game in series to feature mammal animals. While most of them act as pedestrians, some of them may implement vehicle features. For example hippo will cause Hippo Plant, Lion will "eat" skater and Elephant can be skitched.

Double-tap flips/grabs

Known in THPS3 as hidden combos, it was refined and extended, adding double-tap variation for almost each trick in the game.

Skitching

The skater can grab onto the rear bumper of a vehicle (much like Marty McFly in Back to the Future), moving to either end of the bumper to avoid obstacles. Skitching is used for speed boost.

Level Out

This feature allows skaters to "level out" aka orient themself horizontally in the air to prevent bailing. If there is a quarter-pipe on the other side, then a Spine Transfer is performed.

Spine transfer

Allows the skater to move from a one-quarter pipe to another as long as they were back-to-back. This also applies to lip tricks: now skaters will land on the other side of quarter-pipe if balance went off the meter.

Manual/lip/grind extensions

While is was partially implemented in THPS3, it was refined in THPS4, adding more tricks and functionality.

Wallplant (later as Wallieplant)

This trick extends Wallie and was introduced by the analogy with No Comply - Boneless. Wallplant allows to reach higher areas jumping off the Wallride. THPS4 Wallplant was later renamed to Wallieplant and Wallplant name was given to another trick, which may be confusing.

Powerslide

This move allows skaters to invert his direction on flat very fast. It looks like a revert, no any special messages are shown. R2+L2+Down combination was chosen, but it was conflicting with switch stance move, so it was changed in THUG.

Dropdown

While grinding player was able to end the grind trick instantly by pressing R2 or L2. However this feature was only available on PS2. Other platforms will get dropdown only in THUG2.

Available Characters

• Tony Hawk
• Bam Margera
• Bob Burnquist
• Kareem Campbell
• Rune Glifberg
• Bucky Lasek
• Chad Muska
• Andrew Reynolds
• Geoff Rowley
• Eric Koston
• Elissa Steamer
• Jamie Thomas
• Steve Caballero
• Rodney Mullen
• Eddie (unlockable)
• Jango Fett (unlockable)
• Mike Vallely (unlockable)
• Daisy (unlockable)
• Little Person (PSX unlockable)
• Mindy (GBA unlockable)
• Frycook (GBA unlockable)
• Roger (GBA unlockable)
• Momo (GBA unlockable)

Levels

• College, California
• San Francisco, California
• Alcatraz, California
• Kona Skatepark, Florida
• Shipyard
• London, United Kingdom
• Zoo, London
• Carnival
• Chicago, Illinois (originally from Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2)

The Carnival and Chicago levels are exclusive to the Playstation 2, Gamecube, Xbox and Windows versions. The San Francisco level is absent from the Game Boy Advance version. The Playstation version does not feature the Zoo level, but features two extra levels:

• The Sewers
• Little Big World

Soundtrack

Full article: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 Soundtrack

As in THPS3, players could remove any song from the list by using a special toggle menu. There are 37 songs on the complete list. The actual amount of songs in the game varies between platforms.

Trivia

• This is the first game in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series in which the player can skitch vehicles in previous titles if the player encounters a vehicle they are knocked off their board.
• Jango Fett is the second Star Wars character to appear in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series the first being Darth Maul who appears in THPS3.
• It's the first game to feature a goat reference (Carnival level).

Reception

THPS4 received positive reviews gaining high scores. Currently the game is rated 8.2-8.4 by users and 88-94 by critics on Metacritic. Along with praising refined trick system and larger levels, critics only complained about same graphic levels, as they've seen in THPS3 (which is not completely true, as THPS4 introduced more advanced techniques, such as multipass rendering).

External links

• Archived version of official game page at Activision.com
• Archived version of game page at Neversoft.com

Gallery

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 novelty characters
Eddie • Jango Fett • Mike Vallely • Daisy