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On the subject of new dimensions, note also that this familiar gameplay is brought into worlds of an entirely new scale. Generally, if you want to keep a combination going, you have to follow your revert quickly with a few more grind combos, building up more speed for another go up a vert ramp. Thus, you can't just park yourself on a halfpipe and start stringing air tricks together, because your first revert-manual combination will probably rob you of the speed you need to get back up the other side. The main issue you have to compensate for is a loss of speed - pulling off a revert slows you down a fair bit. There are limitations on the use of the revert, though, preventing it from unbalancing gameplay too badly. Hit L2 or R2 on the way down from a vert ramp and you perform a little switch pivot, opening up a brief window to ollie or manual and continue the combo. It's a new dimension nonetheless, though, enabling you to combine air and lip tricks off of vert ramps into your street combos. The new "revert" command is a significant addition, but it doesn't feel as big a leap ahead as the manual was in Tony Hawk 2. Gameplay The trick system as you knew it in Tony Hawk 2 is almost entirely the same - grind, flip, grab, manual. The scary thing is that there's actually still visible room for the series to improve, meaning Tony Hawk 4 should be fairly appalling. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is as brilliant a gameplay experience as it has ever been, amplified with more tricks, more goals, more interactivity, bigger levels, better looks, and.lessee, did I miss anything? Well, there's the Motorhead, but I already talked about that before. Luckily, I don't have to do much of that. And the Ramones, doing "Blitzkrieg Bop." Words cannot express how hard it is for me to say even a few small words against a game that has "Ace of Spades" in it.
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And not only does it have Motorhead in it, it has "Ace of Spades" in it. Other than that, any complaints you could have would merely be matters of taste, and probably matters of bad taste at that. Oh, and there's one ramp in Skater Island where I keep falling through the polygons. And there's no Dayglo Abortions on the soundtrack. What holds Tony Hawk 3 back? The framerate skips here and there.
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