Remember the Tony Hawk games?  They were big news about ten years ago but a succession of shit sequels did for the series, culminating the epic fail of Shred and Ride, two games that used a fake skateboard peripheral.  Of course by then no-one gave the slightest fuck about the series.  For us it all came crashing down when Bam Margera became a main character and you got involved in shopping trolley races or something.  Fuck.

EA took over the genre with their excellent SKATE series (although that’s starting to go through the motions a bit and the DLC sucks infinite cock) and that was that.  Tony’s smug face became a faded memory.

Well, Activision have finally come to their senses and announced that THPS1 and THPS2 are getting the HD remake treatment.  Of course, they’ve got to mess with it slightly – these won’t be seperate ports but rather a big mash-up of the first two games – but if they can keep the gameplay solid (no shitty slo-mo focus mode plz) then they may be onto a winner.

The soundtrack is likely to change so don’t expect too much in the way of bouncy ska-punk (the default skating music genre of the 90s) but hopefully they’ll avoid whatever shit the kids of today are calling punk.

In the meantime, read this account of us reacquainting ourselves with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1.  Rich

Peoww News

Despite looking like a mentally disadvantaged, chubby girl, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi does take the piss somewhat with his excellent feet.  The undisputed best player in the world (apart from during the three seconds where John Terry fucked up that penalty), he’s been one of the cover stars for the Pro Evolution Soccer series in recent years (although Cristiano Ronaldo with his ludicrous neck appears on the latest iteration).

Well, like most of us, he’s jumped ship over to the FIFA camp.  Yesterday saw the game adding his face all over the Ultimate Team store as well as bringing in a ‘rare in-form’ version of his Ultimate Team card that makes him the best player in the game, if you’re lucky enough to get him.

What this really means is that he’ll be all over the marketing for the upcoming FIFA Street debacle and probably the next few FIFAs whilst Wayne Rooney will be relegated to either standing behind him on the cover art or getting dropped entirely.  Rich

Peoww News

A lack of decent game news (unless you really care that Modern Warfare 3 has just set a new record for simultaneous online play or that the Japanese are buying shitloads of 3DS consoles because of Mario 3D Land), late-in-the-year holidays and just too many games have slowed us down a bit.

So far we’re all coming to terms with all the good games being released all at once but expect reviews of the following November releases soon;

Dodonpachi Resurrection – more vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up madness from genre-masters Cave.  So far we like it but it is fucking nails hard.

Skyrim – fuck trying to get exclusives, games like this need to be played, experienced and judged on their merits, not their press-releases.  We’ll get you our thoughts on it once we’ve broken the back of it.  So far though, looking promising.

Saints Row: The Third – THQ’s GTA-killing series is back a fortnight too early for our tastes (Skyrim, man) but we’ll be diving into this four-player gangster game next week and reviewing it as soon as we can.

Modern Warfare 3 – fuck, man.  We’ve had it here all week and haven’t touched it.  Skyrim, man.  We will though.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations – we really need to open up that sealed copy of Brotherhood first.

So expect plenty of review sauce in your faces nice and soon.  In the meantime, the only news we got is that Scribblenauts is temporarily 69p on iTunes.  Probably worth a look then.  Rich

Peoww News

Toshihiro Nagoshi is busy.  Not with Shenmue 3, that fucker’s never coming out, but with Yakuza 5, the new addition to the long-running finger-chopping sandbox series.

It will be set in Kamurocho and will feature series regular, Kazuma Kiryu.  The PSP will also be getting a sequel to Yakuza Black Panther, the catchy-named Kurohyou 2 Ryu ga Gotoku.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was some shamefully stolen news.  See, we’re all yakuza now.  Rich

Peoww News

For whatever fucking reason, EA still insist on using their own servers for their games and typically the servers being used for FIFA 12 will crap out on you if you try to do anything from saving a replay to trying to play Ultimate Team. 

Despite this, 271 million matches have already been played online by the game’s five million or so owners, making this the biggest selling sports game ever.  Yep, even more than Ashes 2009 and Jimmy White’s Snooker.

Let’s hope EA reinvest some of those profits on a server that’s not made out of canabalised Amstrad CPC464s.  Rich