Thrasher is sort of a victim of when it came out. A seriously ambitious title, being basically the first ever skate sim! However, they clearly didn't entirely know what they're doing. Unlike the skate games that came later, this game doesn't really feel intuitive. It's more frustrating than it needs to be. Kind of a shame we didn't get any sequels, because this IS a great formula! It's still fun too, I really like playing it in small bursts! But as it stands, it's kind of more of a novelty than anything else.
I love what this is going for - a more realistic skateboarding sim that drops you in legendary skate spots (EMB, China Banks, Brooklyn Banks, LA ditches) and asks you to think about your run, the path you take, and what tricks you can attempt and pull off to max out your score before having to escape the cops. It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you.
Unfortunately, the physics, the controls, and general feel of the gameplay lets this game down. L1 + Square + Up to nail a manual? Triangle and circle to try a frontside flip? L1 + X + Down for a bluntslide? Absolutely nonsensical. Skate sims would get much better about this starting with the Skate series, using the analogue sticks to approximate your skater's footwork, and recent games like Session and Skater XL tweak this approach to allow you to get really granular with your virtual skating in much more interesting, expressive ways. Coming back to this is really difficult now that we have those games, but this game at least has a vibe and an attitude that the newer skate indies don't really have imo. One of those 'respect more than I enjoy' type games for sure.
Unfortunately, the physics, the controls, and general feel of the gameplay lets this game down. L1 + Square + Up to nail a manual? Triangle and circle to try a frontside flip? L1 + X + Down for a bluntslide? Absolutely nonsensical. Skate sims would get much better about this starting with the Skate series, using the analogue sticks to approximate your skater's footwork, and recent games like Session and Skater XL tweak this approach to allow you to get really granular with your virtual skating in much more interesting, expressive ways. Coming back to this is really difficult now that we have those games, but this game at least has a vibe and an attitude that the newer skate indies don't really have imo. One of those 'respect more than I enjoy' type games for sure.
An alternative take on skating to contrast with the arcadey Tony Hawk series, Thrasher was a game I ended up enjoying for brief moments. There's one thing that really makes this game stand out compared to THPS - fleeing. I grew up in a city that didn't have skate-friendly architecture or parks at all. Skating wasn't really a subculture here, really. Bikes were the big hitter. Thrasher and THPS allowed me to pretend I was part of a world I'd see on television a lot which was nice enough, but unlike THPS, Thrasher showed the risk of it. The allure of being where you shouldn't be, doing what you shouldn't do? That was interesting, and it was even more interesting that there were consequences for it.
Unfortunately the rest of the game isn't quite as good. The feel of it is comparable to GTA3, oddly enough, but the actual gameplay is quite sluggish and hard to get a grip of.
I saw the most recent review by largebagofrocks, where they wrote "It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you" and that got me thinking of a glorious cross between Mirror's Edge and Tony Hawk.
Somebody, make that a reality. I'd buy it.
Unfortunately the rest of the game isn't quite as good. The feel of it is comparable to GTA3, oddly enough, but the actual gameplay is quite sluggish and hard to get a grip of.
I saw the most recent review by largebagofrocks, where they wrote "It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you" and that got me thinking of a glorious cross between Mirror's Edge and Tony Hawk.
Somebody, make that a reality. I'd buy it.