THPS4 was playable on the show floor, and just like it’s previous incarnations, it plays nice and smooth. All of the tricks and moves featured in THPS3, be it grinds, kick flips, grabs, manuals, wall rides, whatever. All of the main functions seem to be in place, and the controls are identical to THPS3’s scheme. The balance meter for the grinds and manuals has been slightly tweaked, as I found it a tiny bit easier to maintain balance in Tony Hawk 4 than I did in 3. The main problem I had with the control would be the latency regarding going from a jump into a quick kickflip. This session, as most of you know, is absolutely vital when you’re trying to rack up points by following the pattern of (manual, jump, kick flip, manual, jump, kick flip) until you find an area to grind, or a ramp to launch off of. Hopefully this will be improved for the final build, as it becomes increasing frustrating the longer you play.

The levels themselves have increased dramatically from THPS3, as has the draw distance. The 2 levels playable were easily at least 1.5x-2x larger in volume than, say, the Canada level in TH3. The E3 levels were very wide open, and while there were many grinds to be found, it seems integrating manuals into your move set is going to become even more vital in this newest version. The biggest addition to the Tony Hawk franchise is definitely the on-the-fly mission objectives. As you skate around the environments, you will often see a character (pedestrian, cop, etc.) with an arrow floating over their head. If you skate up to them and press X (to talk), they will give you a mission objective. At the beginning of the zoo level, a bored security guard was leaning against his post as a man in a rabbit suit of some sort was parading around, promoting the zoo. Should you talk to the guard, he requests that you do an ollie and a cannonball over the man in the costume, just for kicks. Some objectives involve racing to certain parts of the map (complete with a Crazy Taxi arrow to show you the way), so it does seem that mission objectives will have more variety to them.

Overall, THPS4 looks to be exactly what THPS3 is to THPS2, an evolution to the series with one or two main overhauls, and many lesser tweaks that propel the game closer to perfection. The framerate in this early build was very fluid, at least 30fps (possibly 60), and while there were a few blurry spots, the textures were very crisp, the geometry above average, and the character models easily improved over TH3. The animations have also been improved, as there seem to be more options for different spills, depending which direction you fall, and your momentum. While the transitions between multiple wipeout animations are still quite rough, it doesn’t affect the gameplay in the least. If you’re a fan of the Hawk series, you’re definitely going to want to pick this one up as it hits this Fall.