Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD review: asphalt cocktail

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is a significant step up from Ride and Shred, mostly because when I play it I don't fear for the safety of myself and my television. But Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HDfails as a port.

Skaters in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD are like rubber ghosts. When they crash against a surface, they may continue through that surface, appendages clipping through pavement like they're searching for treasure, or the skaters may bounce, sometimes dozens of feet into the air, through the rafters - as ghosts are wont to do - and into the sky.

They're also perverts with an insatiable desire to rub their crotches against rails. You may tell your skater to grind rails with their skateboard, but sometimes they'll refuse, riding long bars of steel with nothing but a scrap of denim protecting their future children. They're experts at performing tricks, I'll give them that, though not always the tricks you'd want them to perform. Moves like the noseblunt slide are done on a "when they feel like it" basis.

Up, up, grind, you'll tell the skater with your controller. He won't listen.

Maybe the original games were this buggy. I don't care; the remake shouldn't be. After years of high-definition ports, a remake project shouldn't simply mean a flashy paint job. Some degree of overall polish is warranted.

Admittedly, gripes like these are unlikely to deter Tony Hawk's Pro Skater fans wanting to rekindle the spark. What should deter them, what extinguishes said spark with a flame-retardant blanket, is the manual.

The manual, a move in which the skateboarder balances on the front or rear wheels of the board, stringing together trick combos, wasn't added to the Pro Skater series until Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. The manual spoils Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, making grinds and flip tricks connected by manuals the best way to accumulate absurd combos and high scores. That's particularly an issue in levels lifted from the original, which were never designed for the manual.