It's hard not to feel nostalgic about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The legendary video game franchise was a staple of any video game library in the 90's and early 2000's. Even if you had no clue how to pop an Ollie in real life, it was always fun to hop into the game and pull off some of the absurd trick combinations and special moves.
As gaming shifted to the HD-Era with the coming of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, Tony Hawk's dominance over the skateboarding genre was diminished due to franchise fatigue and strong completion from the likes of Electronic Arts' Skate series. In 2014, Activision acquired Neversoft, the series long-time developer. Many felt this decision was the final nail in the coffin for the beloved game.
This year however, Activision announced Tony Hawk would be making a comeback and now a few months later, here it is. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is the first entry in the main series since 2007's Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. Does it live up to the series strong pedigree? Sadly not.
Early reviews of the game have been dire, with many labelling it an outright disaster. The Verge's Chris Plante labelled it a 'dumpster fire on wheels' while other outlets are reporting serious bugs and other issues.
Eurogamer has released a two minute compilation video featuring some of the problems plaguing the game at the moment. Destructoid adds to this, saying that the game's colossal 7.7GB day one patch (which is bigger than current game's 4.6GB size) fails to remedy all of these problems.
The graphics also received a beating from the press. Kotaku's early impressions article states:
It's still not a pretty game. In character creation I waited some 10-15 seconds for characters' clothing textures to pop into focus. During one of my online sessions the game lost the ability to activate the park challenges scattered across the level and I had to exit out and restart to get them working.
Unfortunately, it looks like Tony Hawk should have never come back.
