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
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.