Format: Advance
Genre: Sports
Developer: Vicarious Visions, Inc.
Publisher: Activision

The second game I've played on the GBA in this style, the first being Dave Mirra's BMX 3. If you're not aware of what a Pro Skater game is, I'll explain it very briefly. This is an isometric game where you control a character (usually tony hawk) that rolls around a sandbox-like area performing basic and advanced tricks and stunts to earn points, reach certain objects, or complete very specific goals set by the game. In previous Pro Skater games, the player is usually limited by a time limit to complete a set number of tasks in each level. This often led to the player replaying the same levels multiple times to complete all the tasks, opting to focus on 1 or 2 tasks at a time instead of trying to complete them all in one go. This time around the devs got a bit creative. Instead of putting a time limit on the level, they split the tasks into goals you can initiate whenever you want. These goals have time limits themselves, ranging in difficulty depending on the task. The standard timers are between 30 seconds and 2 minutes from what I've seen. The goals are atypical to this type of game. The common 'Hi-Scores' are back, S-K-A-T-E is still in play, 'Find the Hidden Tape' makes an appearance, and a plethora of others. Competitions in this game seem possibly a bit broken and favor the player(?) maybe. What I mean is that you can ignore the competition play area and just do whatever to score points and it will count. Very Strange. Of course the enemy still scores like a mad max bandit that just smoked 5 tons of crack. There are 6 areas in this game, and a secret hidden area that gets unlocked after you beat, literally, everything. Spoiler, I don't have the patience to do that. "CA College" "Alcatraz" "Kona" "Shipyard" "Zoo" and "London" are the exotic locations you visit in this game. Somehow I managed to never visit the shipyard, but I also considered getting to pro as "beating" this game since it looks like the rest of the game was a collectathon for a secret level anyways. To get to PRO status, you have to acquire a crapton of "goal points" or whatever they were called. Basically you go to each area, take on these challenges, win, and you get points. Get enough of those points and you get the option to start PRO status. BUT WAIT there's more! You need to accomplish one last challenge to get PRO status. This final challenge is dependent on the character you're using. Since I went create-a-character on this game, my challenge was "score 1 million points in 5 minutes". After you get PRO Status, you get to do the whole game all over again! yaaaay! Typical Tony Hawk Style. The good thing is that this game has a sort-of cheats menu you can get some fun stuff when you get PRO status. Because I had grabbed enough cash pickups throughout the game, I was able to buy bot the infinite Manual and infinite Grind abilities. That made the high-score challenges a piece of cake, and the COMBO challenges somewhat more doable. The COMBO challenges are the worst ones in the game, as you have to get the letters C-O-M-B-O without breaking your combo. Often you have to Manual (up+down) to grind across open areas to get to another grind spot or ramp to continue your combo. It's a somewhat major design flaw of this game that holds it back from being great. There's also the fact that sometimes you need to perform a wall jump to reach higher levels in order to grind the edge to get up. The somewhat questionable design is offset by the fact that there are some really good quality of life features in this game. For example; "Retry Goal". This feature, accessible by the menu, lets you retry the last goal you failed horribly. Sometimes you get warped to a specific location, other times you keep your location. This is very handy if you're going for a score or combo. You can also check the checklist to see what you have left to do. Each area has a Goal List, and the in-game Store has a full checklist of everything in the game. One piece of warning though, this game CAN glitch, so save often(go to the store to save). I personally lost an hour thirty and had to redo the entire second level. The music is pretty decent, and the graphics were.. acceptable. Credits in the Options Menu.

All in All, This skateboard heaven-or-hell earned 7.5 goals out of 10. The graphics were sometimes misleading. No real explanations of how to do certain required things in the game. C-O-M-B-O's are unforgiving. Game can Glitch. typical tony hawk's physics being unforgiving.