Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

The Good
I loved everything about this game.

Graphics: The graphics are top notch, with hardly any visible abnormalities. The character's actions are smooth and crips, and the animation and transition from trick to trick is nice and lifelike.

Control: Never has skateboarding been easier to control. Four buttons can land you hundred thousand point combos. Grinding a rail, doing a grab, everything is simple, yet elegant.

Difficulty: Challenging for beginners to the game, like myself (I played THPS2, but not too much).

Replay Value: High! Each level has multiple things to unlock, and when you've completed all the goals, you still have to unlock all the different boards (about eight per skater), find the hidden areas and grab the Stat points.

Multiplayer: THPS3 is the first PS2 game to go online, and it does a good job of it. If your a rookie to computers (the technical side), you might have difficulty setting up the network, but the manual explains it quite well. There is nothing like playing a game of Slap! with three other people, trying to see who can knock down each other the most.

The Bad
The difficulty of the game might be easy to veterans of the games. The manual and grind balance meters have been tweaked so it's easy to maintain longer grinds and manuals without too much movement.

The Bottom Line
If you want a fun game that'll last a while and can play with others without a split screen, this game will be good for you.

The Good
Well this game is great in all respects, the graphics are top-notch, the sound is crystal clear, and the gameplay is as good as ever. THPS3 adds one skater (Bam Magera) and loses one (Bob Burnquist). But I think we'd all rather skate with Bam then Bob. The create-a-skater feature has been vastly improved, you now have tons of things to change. The create-a-park feature has also been improved but the levels in the game are more the adequate to fulfill your virtual skating needs. The career mode has been improved so now everyones career goals are a little different. You now have to find stat points and decks in the levels which can sometimes be frustrating but it does add more to the game. Also the movies you unlock with the skaters are a lot longer then the ones in the first two games in the series.

The Bad
The career mode can get kind of boring after the 8th skater you've beaten it with. The music gets old after a while.

The Bottom Line
Overall this game ranks in the top 5 PS2 games so far, its a must buy for skate lovers or anyone who likes a fun game. It's also the first game to have online play!

The Good
Everything! It has really great, detailled graphics which are still fast in high resolutions. The controls are easy to learn if you use a game pad (any with 4 buttons will do, I use a very old cheap pad which works surprisingly well). The music (rap and crossover from numerous well-known and not-so-well-known bands) fits the game absolutely and really makes you feel like you're skating in front of some friends while the ghetto-blaster is roaring :)

All the good skaters are there - except Bob Burnquist who got booted because he sponsors his own game now - and they really are different. Tony Hawk is a really good skater and can do almost everything; Elissa Steamer for example is not bad (she wouldn't show up here if she were) but she's a damn slow girl. And the skaters's animations! They look really realistic, as they do since the first Tony Hawk game but this time they got even smoother.

There are so many tricks a skater can do (and they are different for each skater) that it needs some time to just do them all. And then, in each level are so many gaps or tricks you can do to get a huge score, you really need even more time to discover them. Talking of levels, they are big, detailled and this time full of life. People walk around, cursing at you if you run them over, cars drive (over you if you won't pay attention), other skaters demanding you to "pull some tricks" or making photos of you... Not to mention the intelligent tasks you have to fulfill on every stage. There are 9 of them and while most are just achieving a high, higher and even higher score, they now included a bit more complicated stuff like impressing five skaters with your tricks or drowning a worker in a pool of water :)

The Bad
It has some bugs, like your skater's legs disappearing in the ground, getting stuck when making tricks on a ramp etc. Many clipping errors, too (you can sometimes see secret rooms trough walls). But that's not that bad, you can easily cope with them since they don't appear too often. Sometimes, the sound effects are silent while the music still plays.

The keyboard controls are totally unusable.

The Bottom Line
If you like skateboarding you need this game anyway. But if you don't like it too much (like me), but want a fast, action-packed game with lots of cool stuff to perform, it's still the right one. A really great game, but I didn't expect less from a Tony Hawk game.

The Good
I am a strategy/simulation lover and i didn't expect to like THPS3 so much but man, this is great... I had been playing for four or five months and i am still going on. I just love it.

I keep discovering ways to score higher and higher and the feel to get a good combo without bailing or meeting the floor is cool.

Vert and street skaters will find on THPS3 a good simulator with plenty of possibilities.

The Multiplayer feature made the replay value higher and u will find that the people out there are really on big leagues...

The Bad
Not much but...

A few graphics issue that should be fixed and don't look good on a 2002 release and lack of scenarios in my opinion

The Bottom Line
I am sure that every skater owns this title on his/her collection so i will give my opinion to non-skaters like me.

At a first look you will find it pretty... hmmm... lets say... "Made for teens" but believe me this one is a very complex sport simulator and the challenge will be high for most gamers. Try it if u can.

The Good
The gameplay is good so the all new revert makes you continue the combo and the balance resets when you make it; also during a combo, you can charge the special bar and make special tricks even in your first combo, this is the reason because I like this game.

The Bad
There's no blood when you bail and there elements from THPS 2 that must not be in this game like the big drop or the same game and menu SFX, there are the bad side reasons.

The Bottom Line
Even the bad things of the game, this is a good option if you don't have a 6th generation console.

The Good
The graphics and animation speed of the game are outstanding. Not only this, the gameplay is outstanding too, so you can pass countless hours of gameplay not only for career mode unlocking cheats. Also the Create-a-Skater mode features female skaters and this reminds me to create a superstar mode in WWF Smackdown 2. There are hidden tricks to extend grinding combo, pivots during manuals and the all new revert. Not only this, you can earn bonus points by impressing the spectators in the levels, and there are moving vehicles in some levels, for example the ice cream van is moving in Suburbia level but in the PS one version it's still parked, and in the Los Angeles level there are vehicles too. There are the reasons why I love this port.

The Bad
The rail and manual balance doesn't reset when you apply the revert and the same revert causes slow down, these are the bad sides.

The Bottom Line
If you have a PS2 and you're looking for a good skateboarding game, I recommend this port, you'll enjoy it.