After five years, the nextTony Hawkgame has arrived:Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. Being a remake of the third and fourth installments in the franchise, this game takes it back to the old-school, with the return of many favorite elements,including a stellar intro. However, it also brought back the series' trademark difficulty. TheTony Hawktitles are among the most challenging sports games ever created, if not the toughest.
Scoring a 100% completion rating for bothProject 8andProving Groundis a major accomplishment, andPro Skater 3 + 4remains on par in terms of difficulty.Pro Skater 1 + 2was already brutal, taking a huge amount of time getting to level 100, but the sequel is worse. You must complete 30 whole playthroughs of both games, plus do a lot of challenges,only for the elite level players. It’s no surprise that four achievements in this game have only been obtained by 0.01% of players on Xbox.
5Skater Challenger - 0.09%
Pro Skater’s Sick Trick Combos
The easiest out of the five hardest achievements inTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4must be Skater Challenger, which, appropriately, requires you to complete every Skater challenge. Nearly all the Skater challenges revolve around one particular pro skater, in which you must do a250,000-point combothat contains their exclusive special trick. This seems brutal on paper, but there’s a way to make this achievement significantly easier.
While you can use assist mods for the Skater challenges, you sadly won’t be able to use them for everything.
InTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3and4, you can enable assist mods, which essentially functionas cheats. You can activate perfect manual balance, no bails, double base score, always special, among other assists, but those first four are key to this achievement. With those assists turned on, simply do thespecial move, revert into a manual, and do flatland tricksuntil you reach 250,000 points. Do that for all 29 main pro skaters, plus Bam Margera and Andy Anderson, and that’ll complete most of the challenges.
Bam and Andy are the only secret skaters required for this achievement, and you also don’t need tofind all the hidden decks. In fact, youdon’t need to collect the hidden decks at allfor 100% completion. While you can use assist mods for the Skater challenges, you sadly won’t be able to use them for everything, including the hardest achievement inTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4.
4Expert Challenger - 0.01%
The Biggest Hurdle In 100% Completing This Game
After fully completing Career Mode, you’ll unlock the Expert challenges, which contain thehardest tasks required for achievements yet in the series. There are even two whole sets of Expert challenges, compared to all the other challenge types, which only have one. The Expert 1 and 2 lists mostly contain three types of challenges: hard speedruns, legendary scores, and high score combo gaps.
The worst part is that you cannot use assist mods at all to complete Expert challenges.
Hard speedruns involve completing a park in Speedrun Mode under an extremely minimal time requirement. The time limits here leave no room for error, and one slip-up can result in you having to redo the entire level again. Thankfully, you won’t need to complete the pro goals, only the regular ones. Legendary scores require you to often gain over 2 million points in one level within a two-minute time limit or in a single combo. There’sno easy way out or shortcuts, and you must get good atTony Hawkto stand a chance.
High score combo gaps typically involve gaining a million-point or more combo that contains a specific gap. Once again, you’ll need to master the mechanics ofTony Hawkto string together such a huge combo required here. The worst part is that you cannot use assist mods at all to complete Expert challenges, making them truly for expert-level players. There is one challenge that isn’t too bad, and that’sgaining 10 million points in any park.
For this challenge, use a special create-a-park that you should find on the menu’s front page, having a title of 10 million points or something similar. There’s a floating pitwhere you can rack up 10 million points by doing a ridiculous number of tricks.Just remember to slow down near the endso you can safely grind your way out of the pit.
3Flying Solo - 0.01%
The Worst Part Of The Entire Achievement List
While Expert Challenger has to be the hardest pure skill-based achievement in the game, there’s no doubt that Flying Solo is themost annoying, tedious, and longest achievement. After finishing Career Mode, you unlock Solo Tours, which are essentially the exact same as the regular Career Mode, but you only play as a specific pro skater. There was some initial confusion about this achievement, but it’s all been cleared up now.
You essentially need to complete the game 29 extra times, which just crosses the line into being pure ludicrous.
To get the Flying Solo achievement, you must complete theSolo Tours for all 29 main skaters. This involves completing all regular and pro goals, plus gaining all the platinum medals. None ofthe unlockable secret skatersare required here, whether Bam Margera, Birdman, or Michelangelo, so that does make things slightly better. At first, people thought you had to complete the Solo Tours with every character in the game, but even with only the main pro skaters, that’s still 29 entire playthroughs.
That’s an obscene grind, even with assist mods turned on, and it’s not very fun either. To be frank, reachinglevel 100 inTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2was a better experiencebecause it at least felt like a routine, grinding the same spot over and over again. Here, you essentially need to complete the game 29 extra times, which just crosses the line into being pure ludicrous.
2THPS4 Challenger - 0.01%
Bigger, But Not Necessarily Harder
BothTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3and4have their own exclusive set of challenges that are a massive pain. Once again, there are three main types of challenges: gap combos, speedruns, and all gaps. LikeTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, you must string together numerous gaps in a single combo for each level. Thankfully, there are no hard combo gaps in3 + 4, soyou can use assist modsto complete these.
The same cannot be said for the speedruns. Each level in both games must be completed in Speedrun Mode under a strict time limit, although they are not as bad as the hard speedruns seen in the Expert challenges. The problem is that you stillcannot use assist mods in Speedrun Mode. Even though these challenges aren’t part of the Expert set, you must get rid of the training wheels here, and it can be tough routing these levels for a beginner.
The longest part, however, has to becompleting all the gaps. Each level has dozens of gaps to land, and even with assist mods turned on, finishing them all can take numerous hours when following a guide. Gaps are much more of a problem inTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.
1THPS3 Challenger - 0.01%
Way Too Many Gaps
The number of gaps inTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4is fairly reasonable, while the number inPro Skater 3is just ridiculous. For those who’ve 100% completedTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, you know thatPro Skater 2had a wild number of gaps compared to its predecessor, making the gap collection grind quite a boring affair. That feelingis much worse inPro Skater 3.
Some levels have over 80 gaps to land. Canada has 85 gaps total, but Tokyo has the largest number of gaps in the game with 98. Make sure not to forget aboutTokyo’s secret area, as many gaps are located there. Landing all these gaps takes a long time, and while it’s not as bad as finishing the game 29 times, it’s still not an enjoyable experience while playingTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4.
