Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is finally here, and the consensus seems to be mostly quite positive. I myself dumped a surprising amount of time “trying it out” the other day. I even found myself, quite a while after having put the controller, thinking about how I might be able to get that one V-shaped icon I saw in the Miami School stage.
So yeah, it’s just as addictive and perhaps even more polished than it ever was. There’s one thing I find myself struggling with, though, and it’s something I just can’t wrap my head around: Was I ever as great as playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as I thought I was?
I am not ashamed to admit that I kind of suck at playing THPS now. Even though I immediately fell back into the tactics and grooves I had previously mastered (or so I thought), now it’s bail after bail, mediocre score after mediocre score.
To be fair, in the game’s tutorial, Tony Hawk himself explicitly states that this is a challenging game to master, so don’t get discouraged. This gave me a bit of pause on my personal barrage against my lackluster capabilities.
But you know what? Screw that! I was king back in my day. I could bust out 50k combos with one hand on the controller and the other rooting around in a bag of taco-flavored Doritos. I didn’t suck! Did I?
And just like that, everything went out the window and I no longer knew what was real, what could or couldn’t be believed. I began frantically calling old friends who used to jam with me, pleaded with them to recall just how good or… gulp… bad was I at playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
And although I was met with a hung-up receiver with every attempt, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat vindicated. Of course you were the king of the Hawk-house. It’s the game that changed, not me. No, these golden thumbs haven’t gone soft. Not yet.
While some of us at Half-Glass Gaming might have just accepted the fact that we’re not posting high scores on the leaderboard, I remain convinced that if this were a PSOne controller in my hand, I would still be ruling the roost.
