Kicking things off, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 will put players into a tutorial that will teach them just about every aspect of the title that they need to know. This ranges from a basic movement tutorials to teaching players how they can start pulling off longer, comprehensive trick combos.

For players that might not believe that they have the resources to handle the fast-paced arcade-styled gameplay, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 also features a number of accessibility options, from letting players adjust game speed, score requirements and timer lengths, to even letting them modify the difficulty of balance-based tricks like grinds or manuals. Players can even completely disable bails, which basically ensures that they will never fail at pulling off a trick due to errant positioning.

When it comes to adjusting score requirements, players can either double the base score they make from all tricks, permanently stay in Special mode that allows them to pull off super tricks, or even extend the timer length from the game’s default 2-minute timer up to 5, 10, or even 60 minutes. Game speed can also be slowed down to give players more time to figure out their tricks and where they want to go next.

On the other hand, players that want added challenge can flip these dials in the other direction, reducing their timer, and even outright raising the speed of the game to 1.5x, 2x, and even 3x.

The minute-to-minute gameplay can also be altered radically thanks to options for turning off specific sound effects, adjusting the field of view, changing the camera perspective, changing the visibility of various HUD elements, and even an option to allow players to turn 180 degrees at the press of a single button.

Leading up to the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, back in June, Iron Galaxy Studios had released a launch trailer for the title. Featuring the eponymous Tony Hawk giving us a quick introduction, the trailer gave us a look at some of the game’s many levels and game modes. We also get a good look at some of the cosmetics that are available for the game as part of its Digital Deluxe edition, which includes a Doom Slayer Skater, a Revenant Skater, and a host of skate decks and extra music tracks.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Switch 2 for buyers of the Digital Deluxe edition, and is priced at $49.99 for the standard edition (which is out tomorrow), and $69.99 for the Deluxe edition. There is also a Collector’s Edition that comes with physical goodies including a real-world skateboard deck from Birdhouse, priced at $129.99.

Includes All Original Skaters and most of the Original Levels

The only original levels missing from this remake are Carnival and Chicago from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4; the rest are included in HD splendor. As a fan of the original Chicago level, with its interesting bridges and tight streets, I do lament these absences, but there’s always room fro future DLC, right? The good news is every original skater returns in the remake, with a bunch of brand-new pro skaters joining the fray. It’s worth mentioning that the original games included various console exclusive and unlockable special skaters, which largely don’t make it into the new roster. Bye, bye, Neversoft Eyeball and Ollie the Bum, I’ll miss your HD glow-up.

New Levels

Iron Galaxy is softening the Carnival and Chicago blow a bit by giving us three brand new levels to enjoy. We’ve seen footage and screenshots of two of the new levels: namely Waterpark and Pinball. Waterpark features intricate water slides that are just perfect to slalom and do tricks off of. Additionally, the drained out pool at the bottom provides vert skaters plenty of room to chain combos together. Pinball, on the other hand, provides a neon-bathed eye-candy of an environment that makes you feel like you’re skating inside a classic pinball machine. The third Movie Studio park only has a screenshot with a crashed UFO on the side of a building, but we’re looking forward to some film references that could populate the new level as we try it for ourselves.

Classic 2-Minute Goal Format

The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series has primarily been structured around 2-minute timer runs aimed at getting the best high score and accomplish a variety of challenges. The fun with this is familiarizing oneself with the levels through multiple runs, enough to eventually tackle every challenge in a single 2-minute session. This format changed with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and its far more open-ended approach to its freeroam Career mode.

No Returning Career or Freeroam for THPS 4

Sadly, THPS 4’s career mode isn’t returning for the remake, as THPS 3 + 4 aims to streamline and purify the formula to match the classics. So, like those before it, THPS 4 is structured around the classic 2-minute timer, shaking up the entire format of the original version quite a bit. For example, some NPC missions require much more than 2 minutes to accomplish, tasking the player with going from A to B across a larger map and doing multiple fetch quests in a single task. But Iron Galaxy has come up with a solution to the bigger levels and longer quests, even if it’s not the freeroam people necessarily want.

THPS 4 Timer Can Be Extended

While you’re still forced onto a timer in THPS 4, that timer can be extended between a range of 10 minutes to an hour, allowing the ability to leisurely freeroam and tackle longer challenges within that time frame.

THPS 4 Minigames

Another beloved aspect of THPS 4 was its endearing minigames. Well, those are also scrapped in Iron Galaxy’s remake. The fandom is somewhat divided concerning minigames in the series. On one hand, they offer gameplay variety and a sensation of unexpectedness, on the other, their inclusion tends to dilute the pure arcade emphasis of the original three titles. I fall in the former camp, as someone who enjoyed the sheer zaniness and creativity from THPS 4’s career mode. Whether it was playing tennis or driving a garbage truck around the college campus, these minigames helped the fourth entry stand out, so it’s something of a shame we don’t get that with this remake.

Additional Pro Goals

Something we do get, however, are an extra helping of stuff to do after we complete the initial 10 goals in each THPS 4 level. They’re adding something called ‘Pro Goals’, which are basically more difficult challenges that explore complex lines and aspects of a level not explored in the initial 10 goals. In THPS 4’s special case, they directly involve those lengthy exploratory missions that a 2-minute timer couldn’t complete.

Returning Tricks

Most of this info has focused on THPS 4 in particular, so let’s circle back and go over the tricks the remake is keeping and altering for the two games. Obviously, the combo-extending revert that THPS 3 initially introduced returns for both games here, in addition to standard trick variations like double kickflips and the like. The original THPS 4 was notable for introducing spine transfers to the series, something the THPS 1 + 2 injected into its remakes, which arrives for both THPS 3 and 4 as well. This means that THPS 3 parks can feel fresh thanks to the new usage of tricks from THPS 4 (notably the spine transfer).

Enhanced Skitching

So most of the basic trick toolset from THPS 1 + 2 carries over here unscathed, but what about new tricks? Well, THPS 4 famously introduces skitching, which consists of hanging onto the back of cars or, most notably, elephants in the case of an infamous zoo mission. As the creative director for THPS 3 + 4 highlights, skitching is getting expanded, now allowing skaters to combo into a skitch and not just end a combo on one. The best part of it is that these new skitch mechanics are added onto THPS 3, a game that never had such a feature to begin with.

Create-A-Skater Mode

Very little has been divulged regarding the Create-a-Skater mode, except that it will be featured for both THPS 3 and THPS 4. If it’s like THPS 1 + 2, your custom skaters will be able to partake in a Career mode with special goals not available to pro skaters. The creation tools were pretty limited in the last game, so here’s hoping we get some glasses and a height/weight slider this time.

Create-A-Park Mode

One of my favorite things to do in any THPS game is crafting the weirdest and most ridiculous park imaginable. I think it was Tony Hawk’s Underground where I went especially nuts with it, making a kind of floating rainbow road map that me and my friends would have fun racing through. Well, THPS 3 + 4 brings that mode back and adds 4’s wonderful create a goal and NPC quests into the toolset. We don’t know if the object limit is raised above what THPS 1 + 2 had but it’d be great to relive the days making crazy stuff from the Underground games.

Graphics and Performance

If you looked at this game in motion and thought it looked identical in graphical fidelity to THPS 1 +2, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. Both 1 + 2 and 3 + 4 are made in Unreal Engine 4, so the lighting and texturing look very similar. Still, it’s going to be awesome seeing our favorite parks from 3 and 4 lit up in 4K and running at 60 frames a second.

Multiplayer

We can expect the familiar multiplayer modes of the last game to return for 3 + 4. Games of HORSE and tag are available strictly for couch co-op but there’s no word if 3 + 4 finally adds these modes to the online suite. For online, we can expect Free Skate, Trick Attack, Graffiti, Combo Mambo, and Score Attack. But there’s two brand new modes that Iron Galaxy has promised called HAWK and Competitive modes. The cool thing is multiplayer is cross-platform and supports up to eight players. The bad? Well, console players need PS Plus/Xbox Live/Nintendo Online subscriptions to participate in online multiplayer (like most games).

New Game+

And once you finish the core THPS 3 + 4 experience, you can take a gander at New Game+, which keeps your skater’s amazing end-game stats into another Career full of challenges. As stated before, THPS 4 includes the Pro Goals, which are incorporated into New Game+ as well.

Release Date and Price

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 releases on July 11 for all modern platforms. Those platforms are PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, and PC. The remake will cost $49.99 for the standard edition, $69.99 for the Deluxe Edition, and $129.99 for the Collector’s Edition which comes with an actual Birdhouse skateboard (trucks and wheels sold separately) so you can also attempt to do 1/100^th of what these games allow out into real world skateparks.

First released in 2017, the N. Sane Trilogy contains remasters of Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. While retaining the gameplay of the original titles, the trilogy offered unified save files, revamped visuals, new Time Trials, and the ability to play as Coco, Crash’s sister.

Of course, Game Pass subscribers can look to other releases this month, including 11 bit studios’ Creatures of Ava for cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S on August 7th. Hangar 13’s Mafia: Definitive Edition also goes live on August 13th for cloud, consoles, and PC.

Stay tuned for updates on the next wave of titles in the latter half of August. In the meantime, the following titles will leave the service on August 15th, so play them now while you can:

• Airborne Kingdoms (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Offworld Trading Company (PC)
• Shadow Warrior 3 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Cloud, Console, and PC)

While the status of the others is unknown, leaker eXtas1s (who reported the Game Pass release date for Modern Warfare 3) has alleged that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy would arrive on August 8th. Given the timing, Microsoft may announce it next week as part of the first wave of August games. The other Activision-published games may also be included, though time will tell.

The leaker also reported that Riot Games’ Valorant would be out for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on July 26th, following the apparent end of its limited console beta. Stay tuned for more details and updates in the meantime.

🔥👀 100% CONFIRMADO 🔴

📌 Crash Bandicoot n sane trilogy estará disponible en Gamepass el 8 de Agosto de 2024.

Paso a recordarlo porque no puse tweet individual de ello y quizás algunos no han visto el video donde lo mencioné, me doy el lujazo de confirmarlo también. pic.twitter.com/gme4ilOqnX

— eXtas1s 🎮 Noticias & Rumores (@eXtas1stv) July 23, 2024

Over on the Exputer forums, prominent leaker eXtas1s has claimed that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy will be releasing for Game Pass sometime in August, though it’s unknown if it will be playable via Xbox Cloud Gaming as well. Interestingly enough, the same has been corroborated by Windows Central as well.

Meanwhile, the leaker claims that the trilogy of Crash remakes will be joined by fellow platforming remake trilogy Spyro Reignited Trilogy, as well as beloved remake duology Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2. It’s unknown, however, whether they will also release for the service in August.

The leaker goes on to say that they currently have no information on when we can expect Call of Duty games to begin being added to the Game Pass catalog. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 will, of course, launch day 1 for the service this October, but it remains to be seen how long we’ll be waiting for prior instalments in the series to follow suit.

Taking to Twitter via the series’ official account, Activision unveiled that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, the trilogy of remakes that launched originally in 2017, has sold over 20 million units worldwide across all platforms. The last time we got a sales update for the game was in February 2019, at which point it had shipped over 10 million units, so clearly it has continued to sell at a decent rate in the time since then.

In our review of the game upon its 2017 release, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “In Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, timeless game design and quality upgrades come together to deliver three extremely enjoyable platformers.” Read the full review through here.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Whoa! Thank you to our community of Crash players for this memorable milestone! pic.twitter.com/o3QmThD9UB

— Crash Bandicoot (@CrashBandicoot) June 20, 2024

That’s as per YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming, which has claimed in a recently uploaded video that Activision-owned studio Vicarious Vision – which has plenty of experience with 3D platformers like Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy and multiple Skylanders games – was, at one point, working on a new 3D Donkey Kong game for the Nintendo Switch.

The game was allegedly being designed as a platformer that would have placed an emphasis on movement and traversal mechanics, with quite a bit of emphasis being placed on rail grinding, which Donkey Kong, being Donkey Kong, would have done on jungle vines instead of actual rails.

The game, allegedly codenamed Freedom, never managed to get past the very early stages of development, the video claims, and after about six months of work, it was allegedly cancelled in 2016, with Vicarious Visions instead being directed to provide support work on Call of Duty titles. In the same video, it’s Activision also rejected a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 pitch by the studio in favour of Call of Duty support work.

In 2021, Vicarious Visions was folded into Blizzard Entertainment, before being renamed as Blizzard Albany later in the year. The studio has since worked on Diablo 2: Resurrected and Diablo 4.

In a recent video uploaded by YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming, which cites information from anonymous sources, it’s claimed that after the success of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, developer Vicarious Visions pitched another remake duology to Activision in the form of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. 

Allegedly, the original plan had been to combine remakes of the series’ first four instalments in a single package, though as development on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 progressed, Vicarious Visions decided that the focus would have to remain on the first two games, with the idea being to return to the next two games afterwards.

However, as per the video, Vicarious Visions’ pitch for a second remake was rejected by Activision, with the company instead deciding that the studio would be better utilized for support work on the Call of Duty franchise.

Vicarious Visions would also go on to develop Diablo 2: Resurrected, and was folded into Blizzard Entertainment in 2021. The followed year, what was formerly Vicarious Visions was renamed as Blizzard Albany.

Tony Hawk himself has also previously stated that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was indeed in the works at Vicarious Visions before the studio merged with Blizzard. Read more on that through here.

Curiously, the offline mode seems to be exclusive to the Steam Deck, and running the game by default on any other PC operating system still requires an Internet connection. Players, however, have discovered a way to trick the game into thinking that it is running on a Steam Deck, even if the player is on a PC running on Windows 11.

The trick into running the game offline revolves around setting the right launch option for the game, with Windows players needing to use an environment variable, while Linux players can simply use the command “steamdeck = 1 %command%”.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 made its way on to Steam earlier this month after spending almost 3 years as exclusive to the Epic Games Store. The game is also available on Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 Patch 1.1 Notes for Steam – 10/18/2023

• The keyboard overlay now works properly for Steam Deck users.
• Steam Deck users can now play offline.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remasters the first two mainline games in the series with rebuilt visuals, new pro skaters and the original soundtrack (plus some new songs). It also adds several mechanics from later games like Reverts, Wall Plants and more. Multiplayer with leaderboards is also supported.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 earned critical acclaim at launch (check out our review for more details), with 2.8 million units sold digitally in its first month. Along with the Epic Games Store, it’s also available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Before Vicarious Visions merged with Blizzard Entertainment, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was rumored to be in the works. Learn more about that here.

This. Is. Epic. Drop in to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 on Steam, October 3. Add it to your Wishlist: https://t.co/IngePbHODE pic.twitter.com/XDgJvZ9mN0

— Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 (@TonyHawkTheGame) September 26, 2023