Bigger Tony Hawk Game Gaining Some Traction?
Thanks to those of you that just couldn’t say no to your inner nostalgia taking control of your wallet, Activision and developer Robomodo’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD is a (financial) success. Having been downloaded a total of 120,000 times since its Xbox Live release, sales figures are convincing Acti that it might not be such a horrendous idea to drop a full fledged Tony Hawk game on the masses once more.
According to Robomodo’s head honcho Josh Tsui, Tony Hawk HD served as a kind of test run to see how welcoming the public would be towards a new sequel, and that development on such a title is “just a matter of when and how." Before then, Robomodo plans on supporting the download with DLC featuring levels from Pro Skater 3 and the return of the revert – aka the fuel that stokes the combo-stringing fire – and plan to eventually release the game on PSN and PC.
It’s important to remember that despite Tony Hawk HD’s monetary reception, critics have gauged their reaction to the game between being bored by the lack of content to outright tearing it a new asshole (reviews were "quite vicious,” says Tsui). “Remaining true to a franchise’s roots” and “copy and pasting a thirteen-year-old formula” are two things Robomodo couldn’t tell the difference between, consequently making the remake a very thin package where old school thrills give way to boredom quicker than I can ollie a bum.
Perhaps Activision should consider tossing the franchise back to the original Pro Skater purveyors, Neversoft. They’re currently tethered to the Call of Duty series, poised to support Black Ops II with a lineup of DLC in order to free up Treyarch’s time. Although, I can sympathize with Neversoft if Activision has successfully flogged any desire to work on another skating game out of them after the sheer amount of Tony Hawk’s they’ve created (having bred nine separate entries into the series…it might be safe to assume they’ve lost their taste for Tony Hawk, what with being slaves to the property and all).