For more on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD, check out our full Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD review. Or, for more of the best Xbox 360 games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
Having had a bit of a fall from grace of late, you'd be forgiven for not knowing an awful lot about the Tony Hawk's series of skateboarding games, which rose to popularity in the early 2000s. Playing as one of a selection of famous skaters rolling around a series of different locales in America, you need to perform tricks for points, collect the letters S-K-A-T-E, smash crates and more to complete the various objectives for each level, which in turn earned you cash as to upgrade your character's abilities, buy new tricks and better boards.
At its heart, Tony Hawk's has always been about about simple, accessible skateboarding, without being too realistic - and the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD collection, which is a "best of" collection of the first two games, which were originally released on the first Playstation, at least goes some way to reminding us why it used to be our extreme sports game of choice back in the day. But times have changed a bit, and not just because the hidden VHS tapes have been replaced by DVDs, but also that the game seems to have been made a touch too realistic for our liking - which in turns makes it a trickier prospect for children.
While the moves are all easy enough to pull off, it's landing them that's the problem. While on the old Playstation games, the game tended to orient your skater for you, in this, there's much less help, so you're required to attempt to manually line yourself up pretty much perfectly, lest you go careening into the tarmac. It's this unforgivingness that makes it more difficult for children to get the hang of - back in the day, my six year old brother played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to death and managed fine, but then you could just mash buttons and land some pretty impressive tricks, which doesn't seem so easy to do on this newer version, and as such, it can only be recommended for slightly older kids.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD doesn't really have much in the way of mature content - there's no guns, guts or gore, and when your skater falls off his skateboard, there's not really any more than an 'ooof', before you're restarted upright again. Perhaps the only thing you might want to be wary about is the potential for some bad language in the lyrics of the songs that play in the background - although we haven't come across any yet, and we've specifically been listening out for it.
While the original Tony Hawk's Skateboarding and Pro Skater 2 had a handful of split-screen multiplayer modes to play with a friend sitting next to you, they're all sadly absent for this remake. It's not that the modes aren't included, far from it - instead, they're all just online only. Requiring a £40 a year Xbox Live Gold subscription and a friend with their own copy of the game, you'll be able to play a standard get-the-most-points-to-win 'Trick Attack' mode, as well as the popular 'Graffiti' mode, where doing tricks on objects marks them as your own, and the person with the most spots at the end wins. There's also a new 'Big Head Elimination' mode where your skater's head gradually swells and you need to keep performing tricks to keep it's size down or else it'll pop and you'll be out, but without the ability to play its modes in split-screen, Tony Hawks certainly isn't a game for families looking to play together.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
