Let’s Play Tony Hawk 3! My first PS2 game on the channel; this was a favorite of mine when I got back into video games. When I was about 15-17, I just about stopped playing video games altogether for some reason. I made that transition to watching MTV instead of Nickelodeon and playing guitar instead of video games. I was obsessed with girls, clothes, driving, basically being a teenager, and video games fell by the wayside.
Let’s Play Tony Hawk 3:
That was until my senior year of high school when I became better friends with a classmate named Doug who I learned worked at a local used video game store. I used to kill hours at a time there after school, looking through their used NES games and chatting with Doug. They had PS2 demos set up so I’d play those, as well, and while I never got back to the level of obsession I had with video games in grade/middle school, I got my appreciation for them back and went through a sort of video game renaissance period, a second act if you will.
I convinced my dad to get me a PS2 because it also played DVDs. Fortunately this was at a time when PS2 had been around for awhile, so there were a lot of greatest hits games out for $20. I found a lot of games which meant as much to me as many of the NES games I grew up with. I started out with Tony Hawk 3, Gran Turismo 3, Dynasty Warriors 3, Grand Theft Auto 3… I’m starting to see a pattern here. Man I used to play Dynasty Warriors on the demo PS2 for hours at a time…
BUT ANYWAY, that’s for another time. Tony Hawk 3, let me get to it already. What a fun game. I had never played the earlier installments, but went back and tried them later and couldn’t believe how clunky they were. Tony Hawk 3 was smooth, looked pretty, and I was pretty damn good at busting out a high score full of combos.
There wasn’t much of a plot in this game, it wasn’t nice like Underground where you created your own skater and tried to make a name for yourself. Most of the “missions” and objectives were pretty ridiculously contrived scenarios where you had to collect all of the SKATE letters or do an ollie over a gorilla to make him go back in his cage, but it was still super fun.
My buddy Peter who has appeared on the channel a few times over the years came over a lot to play multiplayer games with me, and the multiplayer in Tony Hawk 3 was pretty solid, giving you a lot of different types of play to choose from, including HORSE, spray paint, keep away, highest score, etc. I liked Tony Hawk 3 so much that I stuck with the franchise and bought Tony Hawk 4 and a couple of the Undergrounds, as well. Solid series.
Still, if pressed I might have to say my best takeaway from Tony Hawk 3 was that it introduced me to Bodyjar, an awesome Australian punk band which has a really solid discography but never gets enough love for my liking. I’d turn off 90% of the soundtrack and just loop “Not the Same” and a couple of other songs on repeat, heh.