this is one of the best computer games i have played. unfortunatly that doesn't mean much as i tend to be pretty disgruntled with games despite the fact that i remain fairly obsessed with them. i played this one maybe 90% of the way through with one skater before becoming sort of fed up and losing interest. but for awhile there i was quite a fan. on the plus side alot of the game is nicely constructed. on each level there are all these goals to accomplish and lots of rewards for doing it- this is true of most games (though too few sports games), but most importantly for much of the game you feel like you're improving- and you really are! it looks neat and has a wonderful feel to it and i loved all the scoring and the detail of the scoring. i liked how it all broke down into little 3 minute or less runs, it sort of combined some of the enjoyable qualities of the traditional (or i guess old) arcade games with all the modern graphics and style. i really liked this. it felt unique too. i mean sometimes every computer game, even across genres, can feel all the same to me, but this felt like a new thing to me.

now the negatives: it doesnt really include anything more than the most rudimentary few instructions. it has a tutorial which was fairly incomplete and deadly confusing at times as it referred to playstation controls or something so it took me a long time to figure out (i am not great at this, but i only play on a computer and am not an idiot or anything). even very late in the game after many hours of play there were some things i was just not entirely clear on how they worked (lots of key combinations). i have read people suggesting you get a, um, i forget the word, one of those play pads or something, but this game is for a pc and does seem to work fine with the keyboard so why not just tell us how it works on that? also there's alot of stuff about different skaters and customizing that was pretty uninteresting to me (but that stuff usually is- at least this game wasn't half skating half "fantasy skate league owner" or something like all those lousy ea sports games out there), and even if it were interesting to me you couldn't really do much interesting- like you could choose alot of tattoos for your skater but they're all kind of the same idea of a tattoo. the boards too you win for your skater are pretty boring. finally, big complaint, towards the end it just gets too hard. for me theres challenging, which is fine, but it just gets to be like work eventually- you got 200,000 pts. now get 400,000. especially in the last half of the campaign i felt it didn't ever let me revel in the skills i had. i realize there are all these people getting millions of points and people are always writing about this or that being too easy, but i must admit i find most games a bit harder than i like. this is especially true in sports and strategy type games where easy is never all that easy and usually bunches up pretty close to the other difficulty levels. still, perhaps a difficulty setting would have been nice here or just, i don't know, in tony hawk i think the idea is you play through lots of skaters. why not have some be lots better than others (rather than just having variations of talents). oh, also, theres a kind of fog when things are far away which can make it sometimes challenging to locate things at a distance (which is important), and there was a stat point i could not jump up to no matter what i tried, and despite the exact descriptions of what should work not working (this was in tokyo, don't know if others ran into this).

thats about it. i recommend it certainly for 5 or 10 bucks.

Scate as a scater you make or pick through places you never dreamed of. You will love this game! It's better than the other 3 games. Buy it now! Ages 9-25.

This game is an absolute must for skaters and non-skaters too. The graphics are awesome and realistic. Once you get how the controls work you constantly get better. When you're out past Canada it gets easy. Depending on your player the objectives are different. When you get bored playing the levels there are a lot of pre-made parks to choose from. If you get tired of those you can made tons of different ones on your own. If you already have THPS1 and 2 you just got to have this one too. The graphics are much better than any extreme sport game I've ever seen. The game is awesome but the controls are difficult since all the tricks are played on the number pad. If you press different directions you get different tricks. It runs on relative slow computers as well as the really fast ones. Along with famous skater like Tony Hawk, Reynolds, Muska, Steamer and others you can create your own skater. As you get through levels you collect stat points. The more stat points the better your skater. The levels are awesome. The graphics are about as realistic as you can get, and the pipes, pools and rails are easy to use. All in all this is an awesome game and though I don't have THPS4 yet I imagine it will be even better.

This game has the wors graphics of any game I know. Get THPS2