Skateboarding Games Had A Huge 2025, But It Was The Controversial...

In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2025, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We'll post new personal picks each day throughout the rest of the month. You can find them all here.

I submit that there's no greater feeling in videogames than finally figuring out how to enjoy a series that once eluded you. Liking games is a skill that you can get better at, and my big skill check of 2025 was learning to love Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4.

A copy of the latest Tony Hawk remake fell into my lap because, well, few others at PC Gamer were interested. THPS was once among the biggest series of the late '90s and early aughts, but their legacy doesn't carry as much weight in PC gaming. Nor does it for me: The sole Tony Hawk I owned back in the day was THUG 2, the 2004 successor series to Pro Skater that let you get off the board and run around (which is what I ended up doing most of the time).

No, instead I was an annoying Skate fan who preferred to kickflip with the right stick and insisted Tony Hawk was too arcadey or unrealistic. How's it feel to be a mega wrong dummy, teen Morgan?

Allow me to catch up: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is divine. It might be the perfect sports game and also the perfect driving game. You're a dude standing on plywood, but you're also an acrobatic vehicle of wicked speeds who can jump, grind, slide, and turn on a dime.

From the outside I assumed THPS was a mindless score-chaser, but that's because I was too dumb to notice it's also a scavenger hunt, a racing game, and a platformer all in one. It's casual fun that slowly bleeds into a raw hunt for efficiency. And it does so while showing just as much reverence for the hobby as the grounded Skate games I obsessed over in the late 2000s.

Sure, THPS physics are exaggerated and one level involves demolishing a Los Angeles highway people are actively driving on, but the goal never wavers from the pursuit of geographic mastery through two minute sessions—the pure gratification of rolling into a foreign place and unlocking its secrets through improbable flip tricks and sickass grinds.

One nice thing about jumping straight into the 3 + 4 remake having not played much of the 1 + 2 remake from 2020 is experiencing this series at the height of Neversoft's powers. Every elevated curb, every high drop, every camouflaged line is so thoughtfully considered and nestled into the scenery.

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Source: PC Gamer