There’s a moment in Alcatraz that I think is pretty much perfect. Here is the deal. I have two goals I’m aiming for. There’s the secret tape, which I can see, high up, but cannot reach, and there’s a mini mission where I must free a prisoner from the main prison block. To do that, I need to knock over a bunch of wheelie bins to find a set of hidden keys, and then beat it back to the central block to unlock the doors.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 reviewPublisher: ActivisionDeveloper: Iron Galaxy StudiosPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 11th July on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X. The game will be available on Game Pass.
That tape is eluding me – or rather the route up to it is eluding me – so I focus on the wheelie bins. WIthout about 50 seconds left on the clock I’ve found four of five bins. The fifth I only find when I have about 30 seconds left. But 30 seconds is a lot in a Tony Hawk game. And luckily, the prison block is right behind me. I free the prisoner – woo! – and the doors are left open. I skate in, up a helix staircase, grind around the upper storeys of the block and then, with five seconds left – why not? – I dive out an open window. But then I catch myself on a wild bend of rebar I was not expecting and I grind along on that until – wham! What’s this? Oh yes, I’ve just collected that secret tape I was after.
This is Tony Hawk in all its brilliance. Lovely moments that leave you feeling dazed, competent and a little bit lucky. Skill and memory, but also all those magnetic connections – the chaining together of separate things through speed and elegance and happy accident.
All of which is to say there’s a lot of chatter around Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. The missing music. The new levels. The tweaks to the flow of the campaign in Tony Hawk 4 itself. But it still has Alcatraz. It still has that endlessly circling sense of momentum. Ultimately, you’re still safe inside a noughties Hot Topic cyclotron. And it still has those moments where A connects to B and to C and then D-E-F and then S-K-A-T-E and it’s just luminously good.