Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 Reviews
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is easily the biggest disappointment of the year for me. Not because I expected it to be great; but because I expected it to at least be enjoyable on some levels. Sadly it fails on almost every attempt. The core skating feels good, but never satisfying, and everything surrounding it just feels flat. I wanted this to the be the resurgence of the series, but it feels more like a budget game wrapped in a AAA game price.
It is a shame I didn't get to spend as much time with Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 as I would have liked or needed. Despite the massive amount of bugs and fatal crashes, there is some fun to be had here. Anyone who played the older Tony Hawks games will feel right at home. Unfortunately, it is impossible to look past the constant problems and bugs. Most of these don't make the game unplayable, but still cause a lot of bother along the way. With only seven levels to explore and play through, your time with this game might be short (and made shorter with the frustration of its problems), but the addition of the player created levels mean there is a little something extra, even if it's nothing we haven't seen before. It is sad that the game turned out this way, because it really should, and could, have been the sequel that the series deserved, and instead has fallen so short. For a full priced retail game, these bugs and design flaws can't be forgiven, and being unable to play the game after only five hours was the final nail in the coffin. Should the game become playable for me again, I will happily play through the rest of the levels, explore the game a bit more, hopefully form a fuller opinion, and write an addendum to this original review, but for now it's not skating by.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a shocking game in every respect. It's not even bad-good. Avoid, or ask for your money back.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a failure in almost every way a game can be a failure.
It's still playable, and might be fun for devoted fans for the series, but there's no question that a lot more polish could've gone into Tony Hawk's revival.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 does a disservice to returning fans and newcomers alike by removing most of what gave the original games flare while being simultaneously riddled with glitches.
Robomodo's Activision-mandated update most often challenges players, strangely, not to score big, but stupidly.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 should not have seen the light of day. It's boring, runs poorly and is, above all else, broken to the point where a crash corrupted my save file. Don't support this lazy cash grab.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is simply not worth your time and money. At a full retail price of $60, there isn't even content to warrant the price, not to mention the sheer amount of technical issues and the changes to the gameplay.
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 fails to recapture the magic of the first four games.
I know it's tempting to give this one a go, especially after the years of awesomeness the Pro Skater franchise has provided in the past, but it doesn't match up to today's standards. Avoid this one like the Black Plague.
The worst case scenario for a last hurrah
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 is a blatantly rushed, insultingly bad attempt to cash-in on the series' nostalgia.
This is not a game, it's a black hole where no fun can exist, and any hope the Tony Hawk franchise had to reboot itself died a slow suffocating death within. No one should buy this.
As a complete package, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 does have a few flaws. Sometimes the physics freak out, sometimes the game doesn't look as good as other games on current consoles do, and other times the game just lags for no reason.
There's absolutely no joy in declaring this game a disaster. There are occasional fleeting moments that serve to remind that skating around a virtual skate park was once an enjoyable pastime, but these are few and far between, and even the most diehard of fans will struggle to find much to enjoy in this package. After a lifetime of flips, nollies and grinds, the Hawkman deserves far better than this.
A proud legacy follows Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, a legacy which is pushed through walls, caught in geometry, and smothered by inexcusable anti-consumer nonsense.
"..it should have been delayed at least 6 months for more development, or outright canceled."
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 could've been great. It's the first 3D skateboarding game of this generation and all it really had to do was deliver an experience a bit better than the likes of Proving Ground and Project 8, just modernised to 2015. It failed to do that though, creating an experience that feels like a step backwards for the series. There's still fun to be had, especially if you can grab the game in the sales, but it's a disappointing installment you'll probably soon put to one side.