struggling to find out why it's not hitting as hard as the original, don't get me wrong the gameplay is MASSIVELY improved, but oh wait, i know why: they made a bright ass colorful version of what was originally a dark, atmospheric, and moody themed PS2 game that absolutely fit the actual vibe of the fucking story. Why the fuck is this game so god damn bright and colorful, IT'S ABOUT ACCEPTING THAT YOU'RE GOING TO FUCKING DIE SOME DAY. YOU WILL DIE. i guess we should celebrate with streamers and balloons and shitty remastered music (except the night song), idk. listen to the original mass destruction and compare them, you'll see exactly what i mean.

and dont get me started with the cutscenes. gone are the dramatic, old and rough anime cutscenes, and in are the weird in-engine persona 5 styled cutscenes and polished up cinematics. they did the first awakening absolutely dirty because of this. look up both the old and new intro, again, you'll see what i mean.

i'll beat this game someday but it's not doing a great job at drawing me back in after 30 hours. it doesn't really fit anywhere theme-wise, it just kinda exists.

"anyone need ammo?"
"I DIED GRAB MY SAMPLES"
"calling in a resupp- FUCK IT SCRAMBLED TO AN AIRSTRIKE RUN"
"ships landing DONT LET IT CRUSH YOU"
"HULK ON ME HULK ON ME,"
"THERE'S A TANK SOMEONE ORBIT IT"
"equip grenade launcher and light armor dumbass it's meta"
"stop fucking teamkilling"
"yo lets run a kill mission then reset campaign, ez money fuck everyone else right"
"hol up my game crashed"
"GET IN THE FUCKING HELLPOD"
"lets try helldive we can do it"
"STUCK ON FOLIAGE FFS"
"characters so fat, already out of stamina wtf"
"REFILL STIMS PLS"
"i'll nade the automator dw"
"CANNON IS AGGRO ON ME HELP"

I clocked more than 5000 hours in the old THPS games so this was calling me, however the roguelite combat mixed with Tony Hawk skateboarding doesn’t really jell with each other here. Also, holy HELL this is VERY early access, with quite misleading game trailers showcasing a more complete-looking game. It left me pissed when I bought it and saw what we actually got:

The game requires you to heavily focus on dodging enemies (with some smaller enemies who don't give much indication that they're attacking) while still maintaining a clean combo and nailing some tricks for attack boosts, but you end up rubbing up against them/taking damage as you can’t really stop moving in a certain direction quickly besides dashing, which is on a cooldown. The grinding snake enemy specifically is a pain here, you can't even jump on the thing to grind it without injuring yourself 90% of the time due to the hitbox for it's spikes on the sides. The first boss is almost unbeatable due to randomly hopping off the back of the enemy while grinding and taking damage from the goo beneath it, it’s a mess.

And even with combat being so punishing, there are BARELY any health pickups, with a max health stat boost you can pick at the end of levels that doesn't even heal you one bit.

The skateboarding though? It's almost peak, it feels almost identical to THPS and if you've played those games, you're right at home, but the problem I find is I find myself skating around and busting out fat combos more than I am actually playing the game as intended, which I think is a problem. Also, some places that should be grindable just aren’t, and keeping your combo when coming down a half-pipe is super difficult. AFAIK there’s a revert in the game, but it’s hard to pull off easily.

The gameplay feels very split. On the one hand you're battling enemies, but then you spend long stretches skating around the map to collect all the letters, hit all the camera crows, get high scores and do side-challenges that it ends up feeling so disconnected. After spending less than maybe 1 minute on actually engaging in combat and rogue-lite goodies, you're just playing a tony hawk game, wandering around an empty map for secrets.

I understand it's in early access, but this feels VERY early access. We have full cutscenes replaced with text boxes for the devs as placeholders, random dialogue boxes appearing on screen for no reason, full maps missing textures and assets, clipping out of bounds constantly, and some of the side minigames not even working when initiating them, effectively soft locking my run.

I'm still giving this a thumbs up because the devs have something here, and I think with time they'll iron things out and this could turn into something awesome. I won't be refunding it, my moneys in and I'm invested in this, but I’m still pissed about the rather misleading gameplay trailers that we got before release. It doesn’t even compare to the mess we bought with our wallets.

this is some hella charming shit, but I can’t help but feel like it was playtested by only 1 person. The platforming mechanics just aren’t clicking for me, some moves straight up don’t register when and how you expect them to. levels are structured for speedrunning, but 50% of the time the big segments don’t hit correctly and/or u run into walls because of a lack of direction.

Other than that, a charming technical achievement made by a small indie team on their own fucking game engine, word.

Edit: I’m 8 worlds into the game now and nah this shit is infuriating, too many bugs and inconsistencies with the platforming. Some bosses are also just completely unfair (the pool table and magnet ones). Putting this down until they fix it, Christ.