You might want to pass on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, for now

There hasn't really been a strong marketing push for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. It almost seems as if the game was released completely under the radar. Sure, the Birdman himself appeared on Conan's Clueless Gamer spot to check out the game along with Little Wayne, but outside of that, there was barely a mention of the game. However, it looks as if this was the intent.

It seems like the PR company for Activision didn't have high hopes for it neither. When I emailed them a few weeks ago to check when the codes for the game would be sent out, I got a prompt response: September 29th. I looked up the release date and found a match. Why is this bad? Generally, review codes get sent out weeks in advance, and then hold an embargo before the release, at which point the reviews can go live. In Tony Hawk's case, the codes wouldn't go out until the game has actually released, which means reviews would go up even later. This is a problem. Readers who trust websites like us to give them our opinion on whether a game is worth their money or not, now can't do their job in time. And in our case, we still have yet to receive our code. That's pretty telling.

However, it seems like Tony Hawk impressions have been circling the web already, and as expected, the results seem pretty disastrous. Destructoid gave the game an 5/10. Then you have The Verge's headline stating Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 looks like a dumpster fire on wheels. Threads on GAF are starting to fill up with glitch gifs galore, courtesy of Eurogamer's video on the matter. Then there was the whole day 1 patch fiasco which rendered the game unplayable until it was patched, with the patch clocking in a bigger filesize than the actual game. On top of all of this, there's the speculation that perhaps the game was rushed out simply due to the licensing contract expiring for Activision this year.

Now don't take my word for any on any of this, I haven't played the game myself. But peruse some of the links I mentioned and give those a read. Perhaps they might just save you some hard-earned cash. As for us, we'll just sit tight and wait for that review code…

Which may not be coming after this is posted.