Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3
Every month we celebrate the most important, innovative, or just plain great games from PlayStation’s past. This issue, we scrape our shins performing Indy nosebones while rocking out to Motörhead in the great skater
Here’s a question, oh lovely reader: what’s the highest-scoring PS2 game ever? You’re thinking GTA: San Andreas, right? Perhaps Okami and its wondrous wolf goddess? Actually, surely it’s got to be melancholy masterpiece Shadow Of The Colossus? Wrong, wronger, and wrongest. The actual answer is… well, obviously the virtual skater adorning these pages.
Yup, Tony’s Hawk Pro Skater 3 has the joint-highest Metacritic score of any PS2 game. Considering it shares said accolade with the genre-defining Grand Theft Auto III, the Birdman’s threequel is in ridiculously esteemed company. And you know what? Back in 2001, Tony and his cube-gleaming pals deserved all the acclaim that came their way.
While its legacy hasn’t endured in quite the same way as that of Metal Gear Solid 3, Ico, or Resident Evil 4, THPS3 is still one of the most influential sports games ever made. Even before PS2’s official network adapter launched in 2002, enterprising skate fans could play the game online via USB ethernet adapters. Such forward thinking from Neversoft makes Tony’s PS2 debut a PlayStation pioneer on par with SOCOM: US Navy SEALs when it comes to breakthrough online action.
Luckily, for the rest of us luddites, who barely had a clue what the internet was back in 2001, the offline component of THPS3 still serves up supreme skating thrills. With far more open, impressively layered tracks than its two PS1 predecessors, bustling NPCs to ollie over, and game-changing new tricks, Hawk absolutely soared on PS2. Just take the addition of the Revert. Arguably the most important move in the 15-game series, this trick lets you amass enormous scores by chaining together vert combos with a single-button manual manoeuvre. Couple this with the debuting balance
NEVERSOFT UTTERLY NAILED THE ZEITGEIST SURROUNDING SKATER CULTURE.
bar for lip tricks, and THPS3 remains the biggest innovator in the series.
Energetic, edgy, with a clear and completely sincere love for the sport, THPS3 was exactly the sort of vibrant, envelope-pushing title that helped define PlayStation as the most modern, relevant games brand of the ’90s and noughties. Neversoft didn’t just capture the cartilage-ruining spirit of the halfpipe-taming sport, the studio completely nailed the general zeitgeist surrounding skater culture.
WORTH THE SKATE
THPS3 had an electrifying atmosphere skate fans couldn’t help but savour. This was a game that was at its best at both ends of the extreme spectrum. At the height of its gravity-defying powers it provided wonderfully absurd spectacle. Example? Pulling off all manner of Eggplants, Mute Inverts, and the odd cheeky BS Disaster while grinding around a cruise ship as Darth Maul. (Activision owned the Star Wars licence then.) Conversely, it also delighted in quiet moments. To this day we cherish memories of serenely skating the kerbs of the inch-perfect Suburbia with Bam Margera, all the while thrashing our overly eager heads to The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop. What. A. Soundtrack.
Sadly, in the 17 years since the Birdman flew so dizzyingly high, the skating genre has gradually been put on life support. Save for ace indie effort Olli Olli and its sequel, skate satisfaction is hard to come by on PS4. Tony, to borrow a phrase from your cerealloving tiger namesake, you really were one of the PlayStation “grrreats!”