Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 review: Nostalgia is the only thing helping a disappointing and sloppy game

£49.99; PS4, XBOX One, 360, PS3; Activision/ROBOMODO

Being a fan of video games there is often occasion for me to be bitterly disappointed; games can go from spectacular to dreadful in the space of a few sequels. Until Activision started packaging the Tony Hawk games with plastic skateboards to ride on (which never actually worked) I was a huge fan of the franchise. As a teenage skateboarder I spent hours and hours playing these games with my friends on cold wet winter evenings. Imagining we were somewhere in southern California skating a school with the skill of a professional and a limitless threshold for pain (unfortunately in the real world I had neither). My interest waned as the games became more and more an episode of Jackass, but even still with each instalment they managed to try something slightly new and hold my attention. When Activision started trying to cash in on the Guitar Hero/Rock Band craze and package the game with a plastic ride on skateboard I tapped out, but luckily this was around the time when EA released the absolutely fantastic Skate games.

So this all leads to today: October 2015 and the release of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. I was promised a return to the glory days of the franchise, I ignored the fact that Robomodo were developing (the developers for the terrible Ride, Shred and Pro Skater HD), and naively I got excited. I raised my expectations and I eagerly awaited the delivery of my copy. Before I even received my copy I started to hear about problems with the game; 7gb day one patches, terrible glitches, awful frame rates etc etc. I still held out hope though, maybe that patch fixed everything? Then I got the game...

Ignoring all the technical problems for a moment let's discuss the actual game. First, the levels are all really disappointingly small, going back to the size of levels seen in Pro Skater 2. They don’t flow well either, the joy of the previous games is that the levels seemed to be put together with at least some input from actual skateboarders. They feel sloppily put together without much thought as to how someone might actually skate around within them, for example doors between areas being too low so if you jump through them you will often hit the wall above and have your run stopped short. Once you’ve skated around the level and done the few standard challenges (SKATE, secret tape etc) you can start one of the level specific “missions”. These can be anything from a high score challenge to a ring collecting race through a level. The problem with these missions is that they are very rarely fun and even more rarely a test of how well you can actually play the game.

But going back to the technical issues... the frame rate when there are other online skaters riding around can drop to near slide show levels, just awful and even more hard to stomach knowing this is a full priced game. And it’s not just issues with the visuals, how is it possible that the game can’t recognise the difference between a lipslide and a boardslide (look it up...) when even the earliest games could manage it? How can there be less tricks in this game than the PS1 games? Why can’t I edit my tricks like in every other game? WHY?!?!

Some of the online multiplayer modes can be entertaining, as can the user created levels, but neither of these are anywhere near strong enough to save this game.

I am probably more upset about this game as I know how good the series can be, some of my favourite gaming experiences have been with Tony Hawk. For a game that has less options, modes and features but the visual quality of the PS2 era games, less tricks than the PS1 era games there is really no excuse. I really think that they only enjoyment I could get out of this game is if I knew it had persuaded EA there was still a market for skateboarding games so they would release another Skate.