Neversoft is hard at work at the next installment of their excellent skateboarding franchise. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is theoretically headed for PS2, PSone and various other systems (GameBoy Color and GBA are probably no-brainers), but at last month’s E3, the PS2 version was the only one shown. Here are my impressions.

The first thing you’ll notice is the graphics – they’re incredible. Remember what a hike in visuals THPS2 was over the original game? This game is like ten times that difference compared to THPS2. The details on the skaters and their animation are superb. Also, there’s much more going on in the backgrounds here – there are pedestrians for the first time, and more realistic traffic (this isn’t New York’s traffic from THPS2 – there are more than a couple of taxicabs this time).

Along with the standard level goals (find the hidden tape, etc.), Neversoft is adding some interesting interactive elements to each level as well. The one that I saw demonstrated involved a bully who had a couple of younger kids pinned down with snowballs. The Activision rep playing the game skated up a ramp and through a large pine tree directly above the bully. This caused a mini-avalanche of snow to fall from the tree and bury the bully up to his neck! Then, as we watched, the two younger kids walked over, and proceeded to make snowballs and pummel the bully in the face with them. Neat.

As far as controls go, the game feels just like the previous Hawks, which is a very good thing. Manuals are back in full effect and Neversoft has added another combo-lengthening trick, called a revert. Reverts are quick stance-switch 180s which you perform with the L2 or R2 button right as you hit the lip of a half-pipe or slope after pulling a vert trick. You can then immediately go into a manual and keep your combo going after hitting some big air. Fans of Hawk 2 know that the game was all about grind combos since manuals could keep those going for a long time. Vert skaters had a rough time since there was no was in the game to link a series of vert jumps together for a monster combo, or to link out of a vert trick into a grind series. Well, thanks to the revert, now you can, and this should open up entirely new possibilities for tricks (revert out of a 900 into a manual and set up a massive grind series, anyone?).

Create a Skater is back, as well as most of the other options you’ve come to expect from the Hawk series (although create a park was still undecided). You can now build a female skater alter-ego, which should please the hordes of grrl gamers who are also Hawk fans. The Activision rep claimed that the create a skater feature in Hawk 3 would be much more in-depth than the one featured in Hawk 2.

The other cool new addition to Hawk 3 is link mode, and the possibility of online play. With four PS2s linked together, you can have four people tearing it up in the same level, a feature Activision had enabled in their booth at the show. As I played, I’d occasionally catch a glimpse of one or more of the other skaters shooting past or pulling off tricks on a half-pipe in the background. Think of the possibilities, though – 4 player Tag? The online component isn’t official yet, probably because Sony is still beating around the bush as far as how they’re going to implement it with the PS2.

The game at E3 was shown at about a 60% finished. It’s scheduled for release this Fall, and this Hawk fanatic was suitably impressed. It will undoubtedly be the first U.S. PS2 game that I actually buy.