No need to create a false suspense, the controversy around Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is virulent enough that you already know what to expect with the game. Yes, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a failed game. Yes, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a very buggy game and yes, chances are the title was developed in just a few months. At the time you read these lines, the game is posting an average of 34% on the referent site Metacritic, which also places it in the box of the worst rated games of 2015. But to be honest with you, we have seen the thing coming for several months, at E3 2015 to be precise, during our visit to the Activision stand which unveiled the game for the very first time. At the time, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 featured different graphics than those seen on screen today. The trick was possible thanks to a famous Day One patch (bigger than the game itself) which changed the game's graphic style at the last minute. It must be said that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 was painful to see, not so far from a title produced at the time of the PS2; and we hardly exaggerate. Unfortunately, awareness at Robomodo was much too late to rectify the situation in full production, hence the appearance of this patch which completely changed the artistic style, with now cel-shaded graphics. Consequently, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 appears less bland than before, but this change ultimately has no impact on our judgment, which remains the same: graphically, it remains weak, very weak even...
OH THE BEAUTIFUL BOWL!
Switching to cel-shading may have allowed the game to sport a cooler, more cartoonish look, but it in no way masked the technical shortcomings that are still just as visible. The modeling of the characters in general is difficult to see, with famous skateboarders difficult to recognize, in particular with regard to Lizzie Armanto, Leticia Bufoni and David Gonzalez who could all three file a complaint for identity theft… As for those who hoped to find all the signature moves of their favorite stars, they may also be disillusioned, the skaters having all been created on the same basis. Some will say that we ask a little too much, but when you land for the first time on PS4 and Xbox One, the least you can do is be presentable, or at least be a minimum of height. But things go seriously wrong when it comes to animation. Again, we have real proof that the game was sloppy and hastily developed. It's simple, we have the impression that Robomodo didn't work his ass off creating new animations from scratch, but simply recycled what already existed in the previous generation's Tony Hawks. When you know that the last episodes were already suffering from competition from Electronic Arts Skateboarding, hitting on such animations in 2015 is downright a joke. The most striking example that proves the extent to which the development of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 was torched in two-two is the physics of the ragdolls, completely on the street and which transforms our skaters into disarticulated dolls as soon as he falls off their board. Even Octodad is doing ten times better!
Technically struggling, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 could have tried to find a balance by offering reinforced concrete gameplay, but again, the title very quickly reveals its limits.
Technically struggling, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 could have tried to find a balance by offering reinforced concrete gameplay, but again, the title very quickly reveals its limits. It's a shame because the concept of going back to basics - ignoring any pretext scenario - and focusing on immediate pleasure was a good idea in itself, but the whole thing is weighed down by a multitude of bugs that harm the gaming experience. Collision bugs, map drops, characters who get stuck in an element of the decor, untimely freezes, skateboarders who leave their board for no valid reason, the list of technical failures is long, not to mention that the frame-rate begins to drop as soon as when you play online and there are more than 5 players on the same skatepark. Here too, it is obvious that the network code was made in a hurry…
THE HARDER THE FALL WILL BE
But beyond its outdated graphics, its technical flaws and its incredible bugs, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 also fails in its lack of risk-taking. When we come back to the front of the stage after having deserted it for 5 years, the minimum is to offer a semblance of novelties. Probably for lack of time, the Robomodo studio has only taken up a skimmed recipe with a gameplay based solely on sequences of figures, with objectives as uninteresting as picking up cassettes, recovering the letters of the word "SKATE" or " COMBO" or even chain tricks in a certain order. Challenges that were valid 10 years ago but that sound like a repetition today. And what about the level design, also incredibly poor, with levels that clearly lack life, inspiration and interactions. Instead, you have to turn to the community and the few creations available to have a semblance of fun and creativity in the skateparks. We must also know how to congratulate these players who have taken their time to try to master the editor of skateparks, frankly not intuitive and which deserves a total overhaul. The whole game by the way...
