Tony Hawk, aka The Birdman: widely recognised as the grandmaster of skateboarding and the guy who has had his name on six games. Tony Hawk's 4 is, surprisingly, the fourth in the series and follows the same format of the first three. You start the game by choosing your skater from a roster of skaters (Bob Burnquist, Buckey Lasek to name but two), and yes you can choose to play as Tony himself. If you don't feel like choosing a ready-made skater, you can create your own skater, giving him or her their own attributes. Plus there are many cheats online that give you the cheat codes to unlock the secret players, and they aren't too hard to find.
From there you have the options of Career Mode, Single Session, Free Skate, etc. You also have a map editor where you can create your dream skate park. There is also a multiplayer option, where you try to outdo your opponent by painting most of the park your colour, by pulling off bigger scoring tricks on various parts of the surroundings.
Now the meat of the game is the career mode. This involves completing various missions in the area you are skating in. You pick these up from civilians, and sometimes Tony himself, and you try to complete them within the given time limit. Now this is where I had a problem with the game. Some of the tasks such as skating around to collect the letters S-K-A-T-E I found frustrating. It took numerous goes until I memorised the locations, and then performed the various tricks to collect them. At this point I realised that maybe a mini map would have been a good idea. Another problem I really hated - while trying to complete one task, I passed one of the mission givers and I was performing a stunt that involved me having to grab the board. This started the prompt with the NPC I passed effectively stopping the mission I was on and starting a new one. This got more and more pronounced as it went along so much so that I reverted to Free Skate mode so I didn't have that problem.
The game engine is remarkable, showing its age a bit now, but still better than most game engines out there. It really gives a sense of freedom that makes you feel that you can skate anywhere and move in all the various planes that a skateboarder's stunts and tricks live in. The stunts and tricks themselves are easy to pull off after awhile, once you get to know the different keyboard combos. Once you pull off a 520 melon with a no comply you really start to feel good.
The soundtrack is awesome, really giving the game that X Games feel, featuring artists like NWA, Sex Pistols and Run DMC to name but a few. I enjoyed this game, despite its flaws, and actually enjoy picking up the joy pad to have a quick session. (Hint: use a joy pad to play this game. Using the keyboard is possible, but it isn't as enjoyable.) Just turn up the sound, aim for the nearest ramp and have a good time
