Flip your car around with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater-inspired REKT [Game of the Week]

I’ve been longing to play a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game that doesn’t suck for the better half of a decade now.

While it doesn’t look like the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series is going to re-materialize anytime soon, Netherlands-based studio Little Chicken Games’ REKT has managed to scratch that itch better than any game in years.

REKT is a difficult title to describe.

It’s part Rocket League, but also part extreme sports game.

In REKT, players are dropped into an open arena with a one-minute time limit and are tasked with accomplishing specific goals.

For example, sometimes missions require something as simple as a single front flip, while in other cases you’ll need to race around a predetermined course in 30 seconds.

One of the more difficult tasks is performing a barrel roll since this requires jumping off a ramp at a particular angle. It’s also possible to skip missions that you might find too tricky by using REKT’s in-game currency, which is a welcome quality-of-life feature.

Similar to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, chaining together various tricks like flips, grinds and every kind of rotation results in an overall score that builds as long as you keep landing moves. That said, an essential part of REKT is knowing when to cut your losses.

For example, if you’ve already built up a significant score, it usually makes sense to let the multiplier run out and bank those points, rather than go for that extra jump or rotation that you might not land perfectly. 

Completing goals earns you in-game currency, which can then be used to purchase new cars and arenas.

Each vehicle controls distinctly, with a car like ‘The Hipster’ being great for performing multiple flips in one jump, while the ‘The Beast in the Back” is a little heavier than most vehicles in REKT, giving it a sense of weight that adds more control over the car.

Though I’ve had a great time with REKT and really enjoy the game’s simple pick-up-and-play simplicity, some may feel that, in its current iteration, doesn’t include enough content.

There are only two arenas right now, with another one coming at some point in the future. Further, level goals can get repetitive and are often variations on tasks you’ve already completed. For example, I recently completed a barrel roll, and my next goal was to finish two barrel rolls in a single run.

Finally, and I only find this worth mentioning because this is becoming increasingly less common in the mobile space, REKT doesn’t feature in-app purchases.

Despite these issues, REKT will likely go down as my favourite game of 2018. REKT is available in the iOS App Store for $2.79 CAD.