‘It is hard to do a review on this without rose tinted glasses, and with the developers upgrading those lenses to HD, it is even harder’

This game quite simply is the blue ray equivalent of a game remastering. This is not a George Lucas remastering, with pointless additions and painful subtractions. No, instead fans of the franchise can expect a rewarding experience with this DLC. Within twenty minutes of playing I was in full blown nostalgia mode. I had not played a Tony Hawk’s game since I was in high school. I was almost tempted to throw on a pair of cargo pants. However, remembering how bad my IRL experience with trying to skate was, I decided to stay safely behind my controller.

Getting to the point though, this game is simply fantastic. This amazed me as a download. The trailer really conveys how confident the creators were in their product. They merely showed a run through the first stage of the game. Show casing the new and improved graphics. Their confidence was justified. Every visual is polished whilst remaining perfectly recognisable. This is great for the veterans of the franchise, who will be able to rediscover their favourite runs. However, new players should not feel that this game is not for them. Their enjoyment will not suffer. In fact both will be able to enter this game just as easily. This is because of the incredibly intuitive controls, and gradual learning curve of the game. Even though it had been years since I had played a Tony Hawk game, the transition into this instalment was so easy that I had no trouble adapting. This does not mean that the game is not challenging. In fact after playing SSX, it was great to play a game that required some real skill and patience.

There are some changes that may or may not please some of the veterans. One of the worst things about the old games was the soundtrack. It was not that the songs were bad, it was just that you only got to enjoy small snippets of them. This has been fixed in HD, instead the soundtrack runs continuously as you play. This means enjoying when worlds collide without the fear of a sudden menu break. There are some new tracks on the game, which the developers justified by stating they wanted to inject some new songs as well. I was happy that there was no dubstep in sight.

Overall I found very little to complain about with this just over four hundred megabyte powerhouse. The game however is not without its downside. Some people will no doubt complain about the almost ragdoll like physics that kick in when you bail on a trick. Personally whilst I do remember the other games that saw your character grabbing his knee like Peter Griffin when you fell over. I am not about to cry because my character ragdolls when I bail. There were also a number of times that I was caught in a glitch loop that had me bailing every time it looped over. To escape this all I had to do was try and manual or grind. So it was more of a pain, than a game killer. These problems did very little to diminish my enjoyment of the game.

My recommendation is to purchase this game. It is possibly the most value for money arcade downloads I have seen since minecraft. For veterans there is a return to a carefree game of yesteryore, and newbies have a new and entertaining game at their fingertips.

5 stars