Graphically, game play, and music wise, this Tony Hawk kicks some serious ass and takes names in the process. Activision and Neversoft have crafted one of the most beautiful, fun to play and deep games that have come across my desk in a long time. One thing to start out with is how smooth the game plays. From the moment you pop the game in you're treated to a masterpiece. Keeping the (mostly solid) 60 fps framerate is quite impressive too since there the levels in Tony Hawk 3 look a lot like those found in the world of Grand Theft Auto 3. If you've played that, you understand how in essence it's a living, breathing world. Such is the fact with THPS 3 and it's massive levels with interactive environments. To give you an example, I've linked together about 42 moves and combos (without using cheats or bugs of any sort) and scored over 2.1 million points. You can combo off of everything in this game. Seriously I mean everything! Cars, people, sidewalks, buildings, rails, ramps, stop signs... The list goes on and on. The funny thing about all this is Neversoft's Highest Score screen shows a high score of 9.4 million. Yes, my jaw dropped too. Which leads me to the game play.

Control wise this thing is as slick as a Ferrari and has all the comforts of home just like in the first two games. I found myself sitting down for at least 2 hours at a time and my hand had not fatigued at all. About the one thing that differs from the first two is the timing of the tricks. While not a huge difference, you'll have to teach the old dog some new tricks. Just a fraction of a second off your jump can make a big difference between landing perfectly and biffing it into the asphalt. The one thing that Neversoft/Activision changed, which is a breath of fresh air, is the fact that your 'boarder no longer just has a board re-appear under his feet. He goes and grabs it (to an extent) and hops back on. Building speed is also critical and depends on how hard you push the button since it's pressure sensitive. To make some of those gap challenges you really have to be going fast, but you'll be yelling with joy once you have.

Music featured on this 3rd edition of the game features some cutting edge music mixed with some older tunes. Although it would be a cross-licensing nightmare, about the only thing that I had wished they had done is include of all the music from the previous games on the 3rd one. Whatever the case may be though, it gets your blood pumping and ready to take on the mammoth challenge that is in THPS 3.

Game play modes include all the favorites (Single Player, Two Player, Graffiti, Horse) along with some amazing new features (of which is online capability). The new modes include: (ONLINE ONLY) King of the Hill and Slap! King of the Hill gives your character a crown to begin with, and you are required to keep it on for at least 2 minutes. The crown changes hands if the player who's wearing it gets bumped. It is more or less, a game of tag of sorts. Slap! is a like any first person shooter, with the exception of having to run into other skaters to earn points. Whoever has the most at the end of the session wins. These of course can currently only be played with a 3rd Party USB network adapter/modem, all of which can be bought at your local gaming shop. While Sony's network adapter is not due out 'til later this year at the earliest, I found that the 3rd party adapter works just great with Dial-Up/DSL and Cable modems.

So how could this game get any better? Tack on a skate park editor with more features, tons of mini-missions and level objectives combined with a deep create-a-skater mode and more outfits that you can shake a stick at. And with a large stable of skaters to choose from to begin with, I'd say you won't getting bored of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for a long time.

Click Here to purchase Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 from Amazon.com