Still in San Diego, and the difficulty of the game seems to have ramped up somewhat now. Things like “get 250,000 in one combo” are the way to go at the moment, and one particulat “do these three tricks in one combo” goal was more than a little difficult. Still, not much more left to do and then I’m on to the final level.
Ran though quite a few more levels, goals and competitons this afternoon. Battery Park came and went, as did the Bronx, Santa Monica and Hollywood. I also opened up the hangar level from THPS2, which only had three goals on it and was pretty small anyway. Things I found difficult included Ollie the Magic Bum’s “Collect 10 Cans” goal in Hollywood, mainly as I was blind and couldn’t see one of them, the huuuuuuggggggge gap (also in Hollywood) as it …
Completed the Mall level, and unlocked the Warehouse (yes – the SAME Warehouse again), completed all of that, won two Competition Vouchers, which let me enter a competition in Noo Joyzee, so I did. And came first, with 198 points (the maximum you can get). Nice. That opened up Battery Park, which I haven’t done much in yet. Also added a few more stats to my list. I think I only have one notch left on Rail now, with everything …
Spent a while racking my stats up even higher. Everything is now full bar one ‘notch’ each on Rail and Flip. Finished a few tasks, including collecting SKATE and COMBO, collecting some doll parts, playing HORSE, and impressing Bucky Lasek with a sick combo. Or something. I’m able to leave Noo Joyzee now, and it’s off to The Mall. Hurrah!
With Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 on the GBA out of the way, it was time to start on the next game in the series: THUG. Spent about half an hour playing it, but haven’t actually done a great deal yet – only built up my stats. Like the console version of THUG (and unlike THPS4), you build up stats by doing certain tricks and combos. So, to build up your Grind stats, you have to do a long grind, …
Just a quick few goes to finish off some more Pro Tour goals. I’m up to 41 completed now, and finished almost all of them in London. Picked up some more money and a few more stats points too. But, THUG calls me to move on now…
Ah. So it seems there’s actually only one Pro Challenge (perhaps per skater), and it seems you don’t have to do a difficult Spine Transfer on Tony’s one to complete it. Once I’d figured that out, it was a pretty simple task to finish it off. And that’s game over, it seems. Well, there is now Pro Tour open, so I went and had a go at that. Cleared most of the goals on the levels (except London), before turning …
Moved on to Kona, the skate park level. It isn’t actually all that much like the GC version, but that doesn’t really matter. There didn’t seem to be all that many goals there, but I racked up enough to move on to the Shipyard level anyway. The Shipyard was pretty difficult, and in the end I just got as many goals as I needed to move on to the next level and didn’t bother with any more. There were a …
Hurrah! It finally came! I have THUG, THUG2 and THAS all waiting for me to play on the GBA, but I want to do them in order so had to wait for THPS4 to arrive. Yes, I know there’s a THPS2 and THPS3 for the GBA, but I already have them and completed them a few years ago. Anyway, so I made a start on it on my Game Boy Micro. I did wonder if the size of the console …
Someone new joined the ugvh Sk8crew today, and had actually beaten some of my scores. They’d got a few hundred thousand points more than me, for both the Run and Combo scores at Vans, so I thought I’d best have another go at them. And lo, 20 minutes later, the crown was regained by me. Hurrah! I then had a go of Trick Attack against some random person, and beat them 2,800,000 to 850,000. BEST.
Hurrah! I didn’t think I was going to be able to do this one, as the remaining tapes were hard. Managed the hidden tape in The Streets, which left four to go. Ticked another off by getting the 30,000 point Pro Score in The Mall, and then I was down to three with only Downhill Jam to find them (well, and some stupidly high Pro Score on some other levels). Thankfully, the hidden tape, 40,000 pro score, and 5 Valves …
Finally finished the Burnside competition level, but it was pretty difficult and a close-run thing in the end. Then it was onto “The Streets”, which I’m assuming is a section of San Francisco. Or something. And it’s hard again. Getting points is really difficult if you can’t chain combos together (no manuals or reverts, remember), and the camera angle when you get vert air makes orientating yourself for the landing a bit difficult. Anyway, managed to get the High Score, …
Well, Downhill Jam has me stumped. At least I managed to get past it by going back to the Warehouse and School levels and trying a few more goals (“tapes”, as they’re called here) to get the required total to open up Burnside. No, not the guy from The Bill. I recognise Burnside from THPS2, as it’s part of a larger level there. It’s a skate competition level, and it’s hard. I can’t seem to “mix it up” enough to …
Yes! The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. And yes! On the N-Gage! And again, yes! It is a bit crap! But I bought it today so really should play it whilst waiting for the Dreamcast and PS1 Tony Hawk games to arrive… No reverts. No manuals. No lip-tricks. No “tweaking” tricks. No backflips, forward flips or rolls. No balance bar (you have to rely upon the wonk angle of Tony). It’s a bit “old school” and no mistake. I also …
And now Classic Mode is complete as well. Ho hum. That means I’m all out of Tony Hawk games. I had managed to reach The Ruins (the last level on Classic) when playing earlier, but even after getting all of the goals, the game didn’t “complete”. Going back and doing some of the goals on previous levels (mainly Kyoto, in the end) did trigger the end sequence, however. After that, I played a few games of Trick Attack on Xbox …