Pros: Sharp graphics, great controls, will last you for a very very long time
Cons: Not an awful lot actually.
The bottom line: This game has everything you could ever want, and you don't have to be a skater to enjoy it.
Those of you who have played the Tony Hawk series in any of it's earlier versions know what I’m talking about when I say that this series rocks rather a large amount. It combines super smooth controls with nice crisp graphics, a great soundtrack, hundreds of tricks, hundreds of objectives, and hundreds of secrets just waiting to be found. You'll notice that I used the word Hundreds a few more times than may be deemed appropriate under normal circumstances, this is because THPS 4 does not come in under the normal circumstances banner.

What we have with TH is a game that sits in a rare sphere of excellence. It delivers in every aspect possible, so lets just go through these shall we?

Let's get the graphics out of the way first because they are the first thing you'll notice. All throughout they retain a crispness that, although it is hardly pushing the XBOX to it's limits, looks mighty fine and does a fantastic job of bringing the environments to life. Everything from a squeaky clean college campus (complete with tennis and basketball courts and hidden areas galore) to a fully working shipyard and the most famous of prisons Alcatraz. Each level is populated with civilians and vehicles that can aid or distract you. The texturing is something rather special, from a slight reflection on a damp empty sewer tunnel, to the flaking rust off a shipping container the textures are high resolution and look fantastic. Then there is the animation of the skater themselves, obviously motion captured it is very smooth as they jump and twist and grab and grind and all manner of other things that I couldn't understand (a healthy knowledge of skater lingo could come in handy but isn't essential, I wouldn't have a clue but picked it up really quickly.)

As for the skater which represents you there is much control and silly fun to be had in customizing him \ her. Everything from hair cut and colour to the shade of the stripes on your British cut socks can be changed with HEAPS of different options for each part of your body and clothing. I am currently using some sort of underpant model pirate hippy with bad eyesight and a penchant for flip flops as my alter ego. (i.e. Green pirate hat, massive pink glasses, tie die shirt, purple elbow pads, white underpants, yellow and blue British socks and a pair of green thongs on the feet. Just try and think of an accent to go with that!)

The skater is not the only thing that you can customise, oh no, there is the soundtrack feature (why don't more games have this?) where you can use a soundtrack you have saved on the XBOX hard drive from your own choice of music. Although I didn't resort to this for some time as the soundtrack that comes with it is AAA Grade and features some great music from bands we all know and, at times, love. While we're on sounds the effects deserve a special mention. The grinds and wheels and other board effects are spot on, as are the ambient level effects. The viscous wince inducing crash effects of broken bones and scraped skin are as awesome as in previous incarnations. The voice acting of the objective people (get to that in a minute) in very tongue in cheek and works really well. My favourite is in the alcatraz level you have to grab on to the back of a guards buggy and hold on for dear life whilst he gives you the tour of the prison in less than a minute, listen closely though and you hear about how much he hates the other ranger because he kissed his girlfriend. This sort of silly thrown in stuff make the game that much more entertaining.

The best customisable feature though is the skate park editor \ creator. That's right you can create your own dream skate park and add jumps, ramps, trees, benches, rails and a huge selection of other things to make the skate park you've always wanted. This feature is incredibly easy to use, you simply select the object then rotate and place it in the map, simple as that. While you can't make anything as intense as the main levels you can make some fantastic multiplayer areas with a bit of effort.

Well lets have a bit of a chat about the most important feature of all shall we? The gameplay.

As you may have guessed by now the gameplay is something very special indeed. They have kept the objective based levels from the previous games but have changed things round a bit. Instead of having two minutes in each level to try and complete one objective you now have an unlimited amount of time to skate around as you wish, and then, when you are ready you can try some objectives. To do this you just skate up to one of the people around who have a large arrow floating above their head and press B. They give you a short spiel and off you go on missions ranging from getting a high score to playing tennis to collecting all the pink elephants that a tripping guy believes are going to get him. The designers have obviously put some thought into these objectives and although many require you to do the same thing they force you to learn new tricks and new ways of doing things and completing some of them allows you to upgrade one of your skater stats such as speed or rail balance (how easy it is to grind along rails without falling off). When you complete enough of these goals you can unlock more levels, and when you have completed enough total you can unlock the Pro Challenges. There are almost 200 of these in the game so this is why I said it will last for so long.

Not only do you get all these things when you complete challenges but you also earn money that you can use to buy everything from more skating videos to cheats, clothes, skaters, boards, and even levels! There are heaps of these to buy as well so if you wanted to unlock everything and see all the secret areas of each level you would have to sit down at this for a VERY long time indeed.

As if all this wasn't enough there is also the multiplayer. That's right, multiplayer. With different modes such as king of the hill (you grab a crown and everyone tries to yoink it off you) to a simple 'slap' game and everything in between including trick-a-thons coupled with the park editor this will keep you entertained for some time as well.

So what to say about Tony Hawk in closing? Well if you've read this far you know that this game has excellent - gameplay, longevity, graphics, and sound, so what on earth are you waiting for?