Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was officially announced earlier this week and while it looks to be a great remake of some popular PS2-era skateboarding games, one big change involving timed challenges in THPS4 might be a dealbreaker for some players.
After some teases and rumors, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was announced on March 4. The game, like 2020’s THPS 1+2, is a full remake of two past games from the Tony Hawk franchise, specifically Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4. The new remake is being developed by Iron Galaxy and is set to launch in July. And while it will feature the old maps, songs, skaters, and tricks fans remember from the classic games, there will be at least one big change involving THPS 4‘s career mode.
Kotaku was able to confirm with Activision that THPS 3+4 will not include the original career mode seen in the OG version of THPS4 on the PS2. Instead, like in the first three games, each THPS4 level will feature a list of challenges to complete in a 2-minute run.
This isn’t how it worked in the original THPS4. That game let players skate around levels freely and find challenges to complete. While many of these challenges did have timers, between those challenges players were free to skate around, explore, and collect money.
When news of this first broke on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater subreddit, there was a lot of disappointment from fans of THPS4. They had hoped that the more freeform career mode—which later evolved into the open world of Tony Hawk’s Underground—would be recreated for the new remake. That’s not the case.
There will still be a free skate option in THPS4 levels, letting you freely skate around and explore, but you won’t able to complete level challenges in that mode. For some players this is a dealbreaker, with some complaints stating that this game is really just a remake of THPS3 with levels from THPS4 added in as a bonus.
Personally, as someone who always found THPS4 to be the oddball of the classic games—not as good as THPS3 and not as fresh as THUG—I’m not too upset about these changes. But I can understand that for fans of THPS4, the changes to career mode are a big bummer.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 launches July 11 on Xbox, Game Pass, PlayStation, Switch, and PC.
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