Wave Break

Tony Hawk with a boat and licensed synthwave music and a Weezer track. It's a litlly clunky and buggy, but that's ok. Definitely recommended.

such a nice game! THps vibe

[h1][b]Wave Break[/b][/h1] [h3][b]Time Played:[/b][/h3] 4.8 Hours (No idea how much of this was trying to play, and the rest, idling for cards.) [h3][b]Last Played:[/b][/h3] 14th of August, 2026 [hr] Coming away from the last, mostly-idle dud, and wanting something summer-y to occupy the remaining days of the season (at least for those that follow the Meteorological Calendar, as I do), I blopped into this with the hope it would be a fun, charming, stunt-filled, summery romp with a nice, 1980s flair. The curse only intensified as a result of it. [h3][b]Yay:[/b][/h3] + Delight was had at the developer splash screen alone. + “Press your favourite button to start” + Boat customisation! + Level editor. + Plenty of boats Decals Side Ornaments Antennae ...and clothing to unlock. + I found the humour immediately-charming. + Even things that wouldn't normally get me like a side pouch for your boat being called the “Nautsack”. That was too clever to not commend. + Not sure if this was an intentional spot of humour, or not, but the fact the boats work flawlessly on-land was another spot of deep enjoyment. + I quite liked the 1980s summer look they were going for on this, something enhanced by having Toxitron Collection G2 Universe Sideswipe as one of my desk Transformers while playing. [h3][b]Meh:[/b][/h3] ~ Nothing. [h3][b]Nay:[/b][/h3] - Objectives that require you to interact with a certain landmark are present, yet the game only shows these to you after you wholly quit out of the level, and re-enter to see these again. Pushing the “Again!” option post-run will not show them to you, nor are they marked with beacons. - The fact the boats work on-land makes me wonder why they included water to begin with. - I found the controls to be way too imprecise for many of the things they were asking of you. - Combat is mostly breaking line-of-sight, or spamming the shoot button, seeing as how dodging did not work once for me. - You are given almost no time whatsoever each level, sessions feeling like they ended just as soon as they began. - While character upgrades do exist, upping the timer is not one of the available items. - Progress on certain objectives is not saved for no apparent reason. Collected cash bundles don't reset, yet progress on two others that don't require you keep up a combo is initialised every run until they're completed. - Figuring out which path to take consumes many of the seconds you could have spent attempting the objective. - On this topic, explosive barrels that detonate at the slightest touch, kill you, and waste seconds while you respawn are also present. - Once you'd done literally all of the point based objectives, the main loop of “do tricks for style, points, and profit” becomes “do slippery, janky platforming, that causes you to miss one of the things needed because you went through a window, rather than going onto the platform you were aiming for”. - Way too little by way of routes onto land-areas existed in stage one existed for my tastes. - Seeing as how you really only have time for one thing each session, many, many replays of each level are needed to do everything. - Stage 2 featured collision issues. - Moreover, the boaters seem purpose-placed to cause waves to know you out of alignment with a bridge, adding needless frustration. - In spite of being aligned to the left of a left rail, multiple instances of locking to, and grinding the one on the right existed. - When you fail any NPC-given mission, and you probably will, instead of having the option to immediately retry right from the menu, you need to open the menu, end the run, then select it, adding what I deemed to be a completely-obnoxious extra step. - Once I realised how to get points reliably, what should have been a robust trick system devolved into a tedious loop. - The game never points out cracked walls, or tells you they can be destroyed. I thus thought Stage 2's Cash was bugged, and that it didn't count a completion. Nope; cheaply-hidden things, and expecting the player to stumble upon it. - If literally any living entity is in the same vicinity as you, the lock will auto-target them, rather than one of these walls, wasting your already-limited seconds. - Level 3 saw me get lodged in an inescapable gap between two objects. - This same level has multiple places I saw absolutely 0 reliable route to. - Most of the above made me wonder why the timer was in-game to begin with, outside of adding as artificial a progress-destroyer as possible to the game. Were this only for certain tasks, that would have been more understandable, but as is, I felt this was only in-place to make the game as tedious, and frustrating as possible. - The protagonist/your character is a coarse, callous, self-righteous, grating criminal lord that I felt absolutely 0 attachment to, or sympathy for. - The entire stock of a shop is not listed at-once, and I've 0 idea when/how this changes. - You can preposterously acquire more than one of each item in the shop...purposes totally-unknown. - “Found a bug? Keep it to yourself” I cannot see this as anything other than “We don't want to waste time improving the player experience.” - Lastly, in order to get all 3 of the cards, you need to play, or have this idling for a total of 4.8 hours. [hr] [h3][b]Verdict:[/b][/h3] Seeing as how I only borrowed it from an aunt for a bit in the early '00s, I have very little working memory of the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and no image of how that gameplay was improved, in the sequels...but I would be absolutely astonished if it was anything half as unfavourable as this. Simply put, I have played few other things as completely-broken, finicky, fiddly, poorly-designed, needlessly-limiting, and player-hostile as this. What little control is given is marred by a frustratingly-short timer, collectibles are completely arbitrary as to whether progress remains between runs, and so, so many of this seemed purpose-designed to be as uncontrollably-frustrating as possible. I got this for next to nothing in a Fanatical bundle, yet still came away from the experience regretting what little was spent to acquire it. Suffice to type, I highly-suspect those looking for the Tony Hawk Pro Skater experience would be better-off spending double the money to get the Remaster of that Series's first two games (thus also getting double the game), or otherwise replaying them. Without exaggeration, this is literally one of the least-favourable gaming experiences I've had. [h3][b]Placed in:[/b][/h3] 6: Traumatically-Toxic.