I'm a big fan of the series, having tons of nostalgia for Pro Skater 2, and American Wasteland in particular. I remember playing P8 on the PS2 back in the day and enjoying it, but never beating it. I can see why, as the PS2 version's level were clearly not retooled enough for the different engine, leading to some very very wonky physics.

As for the HD version, there's stuff to like: the every level is interconnected thing is really really cool. Going from one level to the other in one big combo (without the loading corridors of AW) is tons of fun. Sadly, there's a bunch of things here that drag the whole thing down, making it ultimately annoying:

The ragdoll physics missions are awful. Just bad.

The engine is clearly not quite there yet. They're going for more "realism" while still trying to keep the arcade-y feel, leading to this weird hybrid. Everything feels harder to do than previous entires

* And worst of all, the framerate. We're down to 30FPS here folks, and it makes a world of difference. You could get used to it, but there's also slowdown. Very frequent ones, I think this bitch gets to 15FPS sometimes.

I really wanna like this game, but it was very clearly rushed, and it's difficult to say I do like it.