Stepping back onto the board in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 on PS5 Pro feels like dusting off an old pair of Vans after twenty years in the closet. Mere seconds after making landfall on Alcatraz Island, the ol’ muscle memory kicked in, I nailed a million-point trick line, and I was hooked all over again.
Basically, some gameplay loops are truly timeless. Some visual overhauls are barely needed to justify an excuse for a homecoming. God, I’ve missed bruising my thumb on you, D-pad.
God, I’ve missed bruising my thumb on you, D-pad.
That sense of pure, unfiltered skate joy still pulses through every vert ramp and grind rail in this remake. But let me be brutally honest from the drop-in: booting up a game that built its very soul on killer soundtracks only to discover most of the tunes you love have vanished stings like gravel rash. This is a partially desecrated time capsule.
As someone who was there when these classics first carved their names into PS2 history, I’m more than qualified to roll you through the highs, the lows, the sheer nostalgia, and silly niggles of THPS 3 + 4. I must have have easly put a hundred hours into each of those games, and what I found here was a remake that doesn’t quite add up and equal a must-buy.
At its core, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 isn’t reinventing the wheel, but it’s greasing up the bearings of two of skateboarding’s most iconic entries. Iron Galaxy has fused the mechanics of both titles into a single experience, letting you switch between THPS 3 and THPS 4 parks at will, complete with crossplay multiplayer and an expanded Create a Park editor.
You kick off in classic two-minute Career sessions where the goal is simple: shred the gnar and accumulate as many combos as possible or collect stuff/tick off mini objectives before the timer clicks down to zero. Feeling leisurely? You can also dial the session up to a full hour with Game Mods like “No Bails” and “Perfect Balance” for the ultimate stress-free cruise.
what I found here was a 3 + 4 that doesn’t quite add up and equal a must-buy.
You’ll do all this to steadily unlock new parks, secret skaters, and endgame content by snagging secret tapes and self-improving via earned Stat Points. As I said before, the thrill of flipping over mad gaps and watching your multiplier rocket is still as hypnotic as ever. Though the THPS series continued well beyond these two titles, I still maintain that the formula was never better than these two games (most folks claim 3 was king; I personally mark 4 as the pinnacle).
But this remake is not all rainbows and kickflips. That soundtrack choice looms large over every park and combo. This series practically defined the golden era of licenced skate scene anthems, and to gut the tracklist feels like grinding a pristine rail without wax.
Now, I should actually quantify the gameplay for any new grommets coming to this series fresh. The basics are simple and very unlike any of EA’s Skate games: the d-pad steers your board and flatland spins, and the face buttons trigger grinds, grabs, and flips. Reverts and manuals let you precariously elongate your combo multiplier, though destabilising balance will ruin you in short order. It’s crisp. It’s responsive. But don’t make the mistake of trying to play it with an analogue stick (even though the option is there).
If you played the other recent remake called Tony Hawk’s 1 + 2, you may be wondering what’s new. Skitchin and COMBO Goals from THPS 4 now mesh neatly with THPS 3’s parks and cross-park mechanics. Game Mods let you tinker with the core rules, too. (Wanna skate with zero gravity? Go nuts.)
don’t make the mistake of trying to play it with an analogue stick (even though the option is there).
Visually, THPS 3 + 4 balances somewhere between serviceable and stunning. Iconic parks like College, San Francisco, and Zoo have been lovingly reconstructed in 4K glory right down to the peeling paint on the rails and the reflections on the waterpark’s slides. Lighting pops off slick textures, and pro skaters sport rad new animations that still capture the cool swagger of the originals. That said, it made next to no attempt to push my PS5 Pro to its limit; rather, it landed the impressive trick of providing nostalgia bait and modern polish both.
At the end of the run, I reckon this remake nails the core magic that made these games legends. The flow-state comboing, the physics, and the muscle-memory-rich combo chains are all here and smoother than ever. But, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (going on about what is essentially a broken record), the artistic choice to gut half the soundtrack is tough to forgive.
Still, if you can look past the soundtrack omissions and dive in for those million-point runs, there’s plenty of old gold here. The Create a Park tools, the crossplay sessions, and the Frankensteining together of THPS 3 and 4’s best bits result in a love letter to skate fans that’s still irresistible.
If you’re a die-hard throwback skater or a newcomer curious about where the genre found its true rhythm, this is what you need. I’d be more than happy to kick-push THPS 3 + 4 into your game rotation, even though it’s a sonically deficient redux.
This review was made possible by code provided by Activision Australia.
