Tony Hawks Proskater 3

 

this game must be the most wanted game on the planet i need it now but i will settle for some pictures

 

In videogames, there is always the undisputed "king of the genre." For football games it's Madden. For platformers it's Mario. For first-person shooters it's Quake. And for extreme sports it's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The skateboarding franchise, kicked off back on Sony's 32-bit PlayStation, has been a runaway hit ever since, spawning numerous ports and sequels across the system board. And now it's being totally enhanced, revamped and reworked as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for next-generation consoles including Nintendo GameCube.

Set to arrive on Nintendo's cubistically correct platform "for the holidays," (see: early-December, according to sources), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is everything of past incarnations and much, much more. It proudly boasts bigger, more detailed and interactive environments, photo-realistic pro skaters, a hugely enhanced trick and combo system, a deeper create-a-skater feature and -- you guessed it, even more. It is poised to be the best entry to the series yet and that's saying quite a lot. Read what it means to GameCube owners.

Features

Gameplay
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 represents the natural evolution of the franchise. The basic premise of the game remains identical to its predecessors in that the idea is to pick a skater, travel to a locale and go freestyle, thereby earning cash and unlocking more goods. But Southern California-based developer Neversoft Entertainment -- working exclusively on the PS2 and GameCube versions of the sequel, has harnessed the power of the next-generation systems to realize videogame skateboarding on a much grander scale.

This time around, the worlds in which Tony Hawk and friends grind and flip through on their boards are much larger and seemingly overflowing with interactive elements. Cars fill the city streets and will actually screech to a halt and honk if a skater ollies out in front of them. Pedestrians walk the sidewalks and roadways in fear of skaters. And almost anything players can see, they can travel to -- and trick on. Windows crash out, walls bust open, and new branches are unearthed for the exploration.

There are an included eight different locales in the game from Canada to Los Angeles and Tokyo, and from Rio de Janeiro to Skater Island. Each area features its own unique look -- Tokyo is filled with neon lights and city backdrops while Canada, for example, is more natural, icy and scarcely populated. Additionally, all of the levels serve up their own unique sub areas, like meeting the "Thin Man" in Suburbia and finding his axe so that he may chop down a door to a haunted house (which skaters can then enter).


Above: GCN screenshot of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

The trick and combo system -- always tightly controlled, intuitive and in top form, has also received a makeover for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. In addition to the typically expansive list of grinds, flips, grabs, vert tricks and manuals, Neversoft has introduced "reverts." These enable players to land a vert trick, press the L or R buttons on the GameCube controller, and string together a combination -- ollie into a flip or execute a manual, for more points. One can imagine the possibilities.

The L and R buttons also deliver spin and nollie functionality on the GameCube controller, while the A button ollies, B flip-tricks, Y grinds, and X grabs. Players may presumably use either the analog stick or D-pad for control depending on personal preference.

The title includes more than 12 pro skaters including Bam Margera from the MTV show "Jackass." The list as we know it so far:

 

Cubists will be happy know that Neversoft hasn't sloppily whipped together a port of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to Nintendo's next-generation console -- it has, in fact, done its homework and catered toward the system's abilities. The studio has been in possession of GCN development hardware for more than six months now and the Nintendo version of the game is running only three weeks behind the PS2 one, according to producer Scott Pease. "The full-screen anti-aliasing looks extremely nice on the GameCube, and many of our special effects have been rewritten for the GCN," he notes. "Because we had the advantage of learning from the PS2 engine, the GCN engine is faster, and we don't have to LOD as much. Pedestrians, cars, and objects are always drawn at their highest level of detail on the GameCube."

In addition to skating through hugely expanded environments, players can look forward to other visual improvements such as more detailed polygon models and crisper textures on objects. Also, riders now boast more animation than before, there are more advanced particle effects, and the framerate has thus far remained mostly locked at 60 -- a feat that must be seen in motion to be fully appreciated.

The game features an eclectic mix of artists and songs, below:

 

Unfortunately, at this point it seems the one feature that the GameCube burn of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 will lack is online play, which is scheduled for the PS2 and (later) Xbox versions of the game. This, of course, because Nintendo has not made public any of its plans for an online network. However, THPS3 will feature a split-screen two-player multiplayer mode.

Outlook
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 has for months been one of the most hotly anticipated titles coming to PS2. And now GameCube. Huge, expansive and interactive 3D environments complemented by a finely tuned tricks and combo system, fully licensed pro skaters, beautiful graphics and an awesome soundtrack make this one of the games to own for GCN this fall. We're already frothing at the mouth to get our hands on this one and you should be too.