Both Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 and Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of the Kuma have launched with massive technical flaws that make them a pain to play. Rossco asks the question as to why this is happening and if it should be the case in modern gaming.
WTMG's Leo Faria: "I jumped into Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 expecting a trainwreck, but all I got instead was yet another showcase of Activision dropping a rushed piece of uninspired shovelware just to take advantage of an expiring license. It never felt laughably terrible, just aggressively mediocre and soulless. Whilst I don’t agree with the universally rock-bottom scores (it runs well and I guess the controls could have been worse), I totally get why the franchise would go dormant for a few years after the release of this disaster of a game. As of 2025, the Tony Hawk franchise is going strong, with the recent release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 to scratch our millennial itch. It’s relieving to know that the franchise did not end with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5."
Discover the best and worst of Tony Hawk Games with our comprehensive ranking of all 18 titles in the legendary skateboarding series.
A little more time in the oven would've done these products some good a lot sooner.
Sega Saturn made it but not the 360. Don't remember Saturn having a horrid rrod rate. Absolutely horrid
The launch games were all right, but look at how Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA compared to their re-releases.
Because no one actually cares. Every one just pretends.
Here's why Activision released a broken game;
http://www.gamespot.com/art...
Basically the licence expires this year so Activision spat out one last game as quickly as they could.
Because the more a game bases itself on a famous non-fictional icon, the less quality even matters. I wonder if THPS5 released just for the developers to appear on X Games.
Don't we have to ask ourselves this a lot?
Tony Hawk was rushed out because Activision's license agreement is up soon (perhaps using the game as a way to gauge whether or not it would be profitable to renew the aforementioned license) or because of some upcoming event. We, unfortunately, see this all the time.
The consumer typically doesn't learn that the game is broken until after purchasing it (I realize some gamers use websites to find out if something is or isn't, but we hardly represent every single gamer), such as with Arkham Knight, Sonic 2006, Diablo III (first week at least), SimCity (first week at least), the list goes on. Rush it out to market, get immediate cash, and then who gives a damn about the consumer because they already have the cash? Maybe they'll release a patch, maybe they won't.
We have publishers who blatantly bait-and-switch with physical special editions (Might and Magic VII, for example, not coming with a physical game after showing PC-DVD on everything, including their own unboxing), so the publishers clearly just don't give a damn.