That is right, no Spider-man in this THPS. Unfortunately thats not the only problem with this title as there are many...many problems with the fifth iteration of the Tony Hawk franchise.

Where are you Spider-man?

Its unfortunate, as there hasn't been a new pro skater game since 2002 and they used to be held to such a high standard. If nothing else they were just a fun mindless way to kill some time, always including cool cameo's from characters like spiderman or Jango Fett. For starters my biggest problem with this game is that it launched at sixty dollars. In todays landscape a $60 title comes with a heavy burden. The scrutiny of the masses in terms of content, story, graphic, gameplay, etc with a full price game isn't something to take lightly. If it would've launched digital only (which is a viable option in this digital age) at possibly twenty, the nostalgia wound we soon would open wouldn't have stung so bad. 

 Lets begin with overall quality; Its incredibly glitchy. I faced multiple issues one being textures taking excessive amounts of time to load.  Sometimes textures just don't load...at all.  This then raises the question for me. Do those textures even exist? Am I even alive? Who am I?
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What just happened...Okay back on track.

 Honestly, I would ride around a level for quite some time waiting for areas to load texture to no avail.  In 2015 how do issues like that even exist? 

 Robomodo and Disruptive games are the studios working on this sleeper hit. Robomodo is the same team that made TH Ride and TH Shred. Not to mention other fantastic games like Globbers Escape and Monster Flash. Disruptive has worked on some legitimate titles like Ratchet and Clank All 4 One and Lost planet 3 (the only notable ones by the way). So I guess that makes sense as to why the game textures are trash. Some other glitches I ran into:

  • random combo drops
  • frame rate drops
  • incredible amounts of lag
  • A really weird thing happened too, I was playing a particular mission where I had to ride through rings inside of a swimming pool. It sounds pretty straight forward but if you don't hit the rings at a specific angle you basically fail the mission. I would hit the ring at a specific angle and then suddenly the game wouldn't look so cell shaded anymore.
  • Would freeze up and I would just fall off my skateboard.
Lets roll (pun intended) into game-play. We all remember the times when objectives were so simple as to collect ice cream cones and deliver them to the local swimming pool? The more ice cream you gather, the more comically large your head becomes right? Well most of us will also remember that these are incredibly stupid, outdated, and even more so NOT worth sixty dollars. That is honestly a mission in this game...Collect ice cream, Take it to a swimming pool, Shoot fireworks at a target, Collect voodoo dolls, all while doing combos so the voodoo dolls give you more points. I...I...okay?

 The character list is terrible as well. Lil wayne is a playable character...LIL WAYNE. Why? There used to legitimately be cool characters you could play as; Darth Maul, Jango Fett, Spiderman! We've been reduced to a human body with Sackboys head. But wait, Octodad is also a playable character.. I guess thats cool.

All in all, this game 100% is not worth sixty dollars. If you want it, wait a couple weeks for when it inevitably drops down to twenty dollars. I wouldn't even spend that much on it though as it's an  incredibly glitchy mess of a game for a genre that has not been relevant for a half of a decade.

We give it a...