Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

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
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.