Tony Hawk game is a legendary name in mobile recreation. Although in 2009, there were rumors of dissatisfaction flying around about the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, when the game was actually available in App Store the next year, it blew away the whole gaming community.
This game did not choose a different path from other premium games though. It stopped giving out updates and later was taken out from the store. However, the point here is, we used to have that good game at our disposal 8 years ago and now it is no longer true.
Since the Pro Skater 2, things are getting downhill for anything that comes under the name Tony Hawk. The year 2014 saw the launch of Shred Session. This title did not survive until its global release. Things seem to be a little brighter this year when we heard that there is a brand new title planned to be launched. This newbie is Tony Hawk’s Skate Jam and it has been on the App Store already.
However, this game did not meet the expectation of long-running fans.
The first thing that this game got criticized for is its tutorial. You have buttons for tricks like grinding, jumping, grab tricks, and flip tricks. There is also a virtual joystick to control movement. As with other Tony Hawk games, you are supposed to combine these buttons and joystick to create moves. That is the theory but in reality, things are totally different.
You are tasked with doing tricks with the buttons to move on with the game, but it seems pretty unresponsive at times. One moment you could not get some of the movements right no matter how hard you try, and then the next the game suddenly decided to let you proceed.
And now comes the purchasing part with an in-game store, and with it comes a serious bug. You were supposed to buy a skateboard with using coins. However, the game did not give out any coins to begin with. Needless to say, this one bug could be considered game-breaking.
The experience did not get any better in the actual game.
There is a daily competition for the best combo and if you want to join and take your chance of winning a reward, you have to pay out your game currency. However, from what we understand so far, only the top 30 have any kind of prizes, so there is really no incentive for the average player to try out this mode. A better way to spend the money would be purchasing power-ups that can give you an edge over your competitors online. The idea of allowing people to buy these power-ups to gain an advantage just makes this title downright pay-to-win, especially considering that players already had to pay to join the competition in the first place.
Of course, some people will say that we can just ignore that weird mode and enjoy the main game. Yet that main game is nothing to write home about either. There was another game from Tony Hawk that was widely criticized but at least it had decent music and a soul to it, but the same cannot be said about Skate Jam. The animation is far from smooth and flexible and the soundtrack seems like it has nothing to do with the game.
Tony Hawk’s Skate Jam feels like it is just another mediocre skate game on the App Store. Even though this is the closest one can get to a Tony Hawk game on iPhone, it is still very hard to like it one bit. With the excellent Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 8 years ago, it is startling that they can release a game like this.
Tony Hawk is believed to have the knack for making video games. Anyone who has played Hawk's games over the years can say that he knows what makes a game fun and captivating, and his talent is a big part of why the Pro Skate series was such a big success. It is puzzling that he is the same person who approves the release of Skate Jam this week.
The only good thing that can be said about this game is how easy it is to update.
There are some games that completely change after a few updates and now we can only hope Skate Jam can have the same outcome. But for the time being, this game is a total disappointment.
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