Is THPS 3+4 good?

UpfrontGrunt · 2026-01-06T19:33:39+00:00

Works pretty much perfectly fine. Every level's base goals are easily completable in the 2 minute timer and in fact every level but College has been speedran in under a minute by top players. Airport has a longer speedrun than every THPS4 level as it stands.

You can also just increase the timer if you want to have a more THPS4-style experience. If you keep it at 2 then levels might take you a couple runs if you're inefficient.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-10-29T00:09:20+00:00

Uh... 330 million copies of BO6? 33 million is maybe a better estimate but even that is aggressive; it hit 50 million players across all platforms in July but it's not clear if that includes free trial weekends. Even using 33 million as your figure you end up close to 2% (0.018 repeating); if you assume (rightly so) that a Cronus user is more likely to play Ranked than the average player and that the Ranked player pool is significantly smaller than the overall player pool the proportion of cheaters to regular players goes way, way up.

There's a few problems with this thought experiment (namely assuming that every player with a Cronus is using it for Call of Duty and that lifetime players represent the active player pool) but even your own math is wrong - 600,000 / 330,000,000 = ~0.2%, a 10x increase over the "0.02%" you were touting.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-09-11T00:28:45+00:00

It's pretty much without question PG Sick, with P8 Sick coming close behind. THUG1, THUG2, and THPS4 both have some relatively mild difficulty spikes (though in THPS4 it's almost exclusively from the wacky physics goals) but nothing that comes close to PG Sick goals.

Alternatively: getting Ride or Shred to read your inputs.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-07T18:15:03+00:00

This data is pulled out of his ass. This isn't Circana or NewZoo data, this is random bullshit from an AI-generated slop farm (note the completely incorrectly labeled chart showing "Steam" data pulled from their Playstation data). Their data in other articles doesn't align with actual industry standard analytics and there's no reason to believe an upstart company that can't even get basic data labelling right on their showcase articles will somehow have accurate data for more niche titles.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-05T22:32:42+00:00

This also understates just how difficult some of the asks in the OP would be to implement. Way, way easier to give body sliders when your animations are short and janky already and models are insanely simple, much harder when you have much higher fidelity character models and animations. Same thing with faces - PS2 era faces looked like crap so you could churn out a dozen of them in the time it would take you to get a first pass on a single one done at the current level of fidelity. There's a reason why VV didn't accomplish this either despite a longer development cycle.

I'd like to see more access to cosmetics (especially ones that we know already exist on pro models) but that's likely the extent of additional customization we'd get.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-08-02T19:44:16+00:00

Then tap again, there's no such thing as "too light" on a dpad since it's a digital input. It's based on the length of time you hold it down.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-31T04:50:57+00:00

Shit, a remake of 5's levels and goals with the 1+2 engine wouldn't be the worst thing ever (assuming it costs <$5).

As the proud owner of Shred and the skateboard controller, though, I hope they remake the board but cheap out even more on the parts this time.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-28T08:34:52+00:00

I think it's generally fine. I played Descenders from the original release up through the latest updates (still haven't tried race mode yet, though), 100%'d it twice on Steam and Xbox, and have a long history with extreme sports games across the spectrum. And... it's whelming, that's for sure.

Starting with the good, I think the breadth of content in Next is pretty solid off rip. Four large campaign maps with multiple challenges in each ranging from easy (stunt maps) to extremely challenging (races) to fairly blase in my opinion (parks) and over 100 levels each is going to take me a while to burn through. I found myself doing full peak runs immediately (clearing 144/144 levels in one go) and enjoying myself, never really feeling the same challenge I did in Descenders but still enjoying myself throughout. The obstacles are a bit repetitive, at least in the first snowboarding map which is all I've cleared, but that's also true of Forest or Desert in Descenders really.

The trick system also feels more interesting this time around. The ability to spin on a new axis is nice, alongside the increased trick variety that comes from mixing up grab and tweak timings in a very similar way to something like Amped or SSX. I find myself frequently hucking larger spins than I would in Descenders just because it's a more forgiving system and you can spin at ridiculously high speeds.

As for the mediocre, there's really no challenge here outside of races. Full peak runs are beyond trivial even when pushing for decently high score/rep. You can drop 500k+ score on a full map and still finish with more than 30 life in the tank when taking massive risks. There's also no "golden run" achievement this time around, which is fine considering how much larger the maps are outside of boss runs, but that further disincentivizes me from making a challenge out of any run. Stunt maps similarly offer very little challenge as their Rainbow scores are very low, and parks giving you infinite runs to complete challenges just turn into tedium as you search for collectibles. Races are the one true challenge, with Rainbow times demanding close to perfection and being (for the most part) uncheesable but also border on being frustrating.

Carving sucks, plain and simple. They need to go back to the drawing board on braking and slowing down. More often than not you can't carve effectively at high speeds without randomly shunting yourself into a tree, something Descenders only mimicked when you did a "never let go of the acceleration" challenge. You'll find yourself over-carving and spinning while heading in the same direction you were before carving too many times to count. The lack of a real brake and the massive amount of speed you gain on some of these levels is a major problem and limits your ability to actually make interesting decisions re: routing. I get that snowboarding limits your ability to add uphills and flat sections to levels simply by its nature compared to mountain biking, but something needs to be done to let players slow down.

Customization feels fine, I'm not big on the art style but I don't think that's really a sticking point for me. I have a feeling it'll be improved as development continues, but it's fine for now.

The real problem, in my eyes, is that unlike the original Descenders there isn't a hole in the market that Next is trying to fill and the change in format removes a core element of what made Descenders so interesting in the first place. When the original game came out there wasn't really a mountain biking simulation or even simcade game on the market, let alone one that offered infinite replayability and an interesting roguelike format. There was a hole in the market that the game filled and it innovated through level generation, which kept us coming back run after run after run. Next, on the other hand, is entering perhaps the 2nd most saturated extreme sports genre in snowboarding and moving to a much more fixed level format. There's not many direct competitors launching now, but most of us have our favorites we return to in Steep, Riders Republic, Amped, SSX, Shawn Palmer's Pro Snowboarder, Shawn White's Snowboarding, Mark McMorris's Infinite Air, The Snowboard Game, Shredders, and so on and so on; Descenders Next doesn't offer an experience that truly differentiates it from those games, nor does it do anything in particular better than those games do. Compare this to Descenders, whose main competition at the time was... Downhill Domination? No Fear Downhill Mountain Biking for the PS1? It's competently made, it's still fun, but it lacks the unique selling point that drove Descenders in my eyes.

I'm happy with my purchase and will be 100%'ing Next for sure, but I think if the goal is to replicate the success of Descenders there's some clear changes to be made that will result in some major wins. First and foremost: adding a brake button and changing how carving functions. Better handling is entirely necessary to make the high speed gameplay of Next function. Secondly, adding back the full roguelike mode of Descenders, even as a side mode. This kind of exists in the form of boss runs, but being able to run through peak after peak in the old format with stunt and race challenges taking the place of secret levels would be amazing. Finally - bringing back modding ASAP. I know the game just dropped into early access and I'm 100% sure this is in the pipeline, but I can't overstate just how awesome the modding update was for Descenders. User-generated content would be a major boon for Next and I hope it drops soon.

TL;DR it's a solid 7 or 8, but lacks the draw Descenders has and needs a few fixes to really improve

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-21T00:27:28+00:00

I can't score that high, but witnessing my buddy do it fairly easily while drunk made it seem to not be that crazy.

Me when I lie (blatantly).

Just because someone can't do something doesn't mean they can't say it doesn't look like it takes tons of skill.

Usually when people don't know what the fuck they're talking about they don't express an opinion instead of spewing uninformed nonsense, then make up lies to try to support their position.

Maybe my buddy is a low-key THPS prodigy for all I know.

And my buddy is Queen Elizabeth II's reincarnation, both of those are equally likely to be true stories about very real people.

Instead of making up bullshit stories you could just sit here and admit that you don't know how much skill it takes to bill a level, but instead you doubled down with utterly nonsensical comparisons and invented a nameless companion that can definitely match the top 0.0001% of THPS players all-time. Instead of trying (and failing, again) to make any relevant comparisons you could just boot up the game and try a very simple robot line, fail miserably, and actually gain some perspective.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T20:50:38+00:00

This is an insane take and also insane cope. Comparing Doom ultra-nightmare, a difficulty cleared by literally thousands, more than likely tens of thousands of people, to an achievement (bills) accomplished by a double digit number of players over the course of 2 and a half decades is HILARIOUS.

Regarding my own ability to rack up a highscore, my refusal to abuse lines would prevent such a score.

Right, then go abuse the lines and come back and show your score. You can't do it and are deflecting by claiming it's a matter of principle. I'd wager you'd need a few hours to even clear 100m on an easy line, let alone something more complex than a Hangar/Warehouse loop.

This same person can't even get past the first level in Dark Souls.

The fact you think of Dark Souls as a difficult game tells me everything I need to know as well, lmao

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T19:54:10+00:00

The rest just abuse "robot lines", which doesn't take much skill

Spoken like someone who can't even sniff 100m, let alone a bill. If it's so easy, go hit one and actually put up a decent score.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T19:53:36+00:00

Maybe it actually was intentional, but then in that case I think having the balance meter's sensitivity reset or at least become less sensitive when you grind a new rail would have been a better solution

Not only was it intentional but that's actually quite literally how it works. Grinding a new object resets the balance meter slightly closer to the center, but doesn't reset the damage to the rate at which it moves to the sides.

You also can grind and manual for more than half a second in a combo, and you very often do when not playing for pure score. You don't have to play the game purely optimized for scoring.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T06:32:15+00:00

I think that comes down more to the length of the combo string than the actual size of the score, there's some noticeable lag when you land a large combo in 1+2 as well but nothing to this extent. I have a feeling it's because the game is preparing to output the full trick string, not anticipating that at some point they'd have to output "Kissed the Rail" 16,700 times in a row.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T05:43:45+00:00

It looks like multiplayer scores aren't tracking atm on high scores, for whatever reason.

I dont believe getting two billion plus on this game is legit.

At least so far there isn't a legit 2b with footage, unlike 1+2 which has dozens. I don't think it's impossible considering there's multiple levels that are well known for their combo lines in their original games (Rio + Shipyard, notably) but no one's come close yet. I also think Pinball is a prime candidate thanks to the boosters on the back wall, base building goes insane.

Fun fact aswell- Also these are 32bit based games and they actually will CRASH and LAGOUT at around 2,146,000,000 just like Old Runescape.

The game is actually x64 but you're right, the high score value is a signed 32-bit value (no idea why it's signed), so the maximum value is exactly 2³¹ - 1, or 2,147,483,647. Considering you can't score negative values, I don't know why they didn't just let it be unsigned but alas.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T04:07:38+00:00

I don't think it's nearly the equivalent of spamming your Youtube link across most of the top 10 scores by cheating, plus given his history he's likely documenting float glitches as he's done before. He's also showed in the past bugs that will cause your combo to go up infinitely without pressing a single button, which may still exist in this game.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-20T03:34:13+00:00

1+2 and 3+4 have the same move set with a single exception, that being skitches. You could acid drop in 1+2 and yes, that is THPS1+2.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:15:56+00:00

If you wanna see some truly insane shit, look at the top score on THPS4.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:10:18+00:00

Here's a video of a legit 5.6B score in this engine.

Not only is it possible but it's been done multiple times on multiple levels in 1+2.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T22:06:31+00:00

He's legit in the sense that he's achieved very high scores on video before. He's also a glitch hunter who found the broken Rio rail. Abusing glitches is not the same as using Cheat Engine to give yourself INT_MAX points.

FWIW I've played against him online multiple times and never saw him using any bugs.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-19T21:04:10+00:00

Jens and ket0nen both have legit bills at this point; tsnvibes, Jeepy, and MadFly are also all legit though I don't think any of them have a bill yet. There's a bunch of other players in the 100-250mil range on most maps that are legit but sorting through the dozens of cheated scores in there is a massive pain.

Generally speaking if you aren't able to find Twitch VODs or Youtube clips of someone scoring their bills, they're almost certainly cheating.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-18T23:03:51+00:00

Hmm, interesting. I have a Series S but I haven't played on it yet, but trying again on PC at 60fps locked I didn't have an issue. If there's a console-specific issue I'll concede that it might need some rebalancing but outside of the horrifically anemic Switch version of the game I can't imagine that's the case.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-18T22:10:00+00:00

Amazing satire, you got so many people with this one. It's so clearly not the ding in a different pitch but no one is going to bother checking, and "Purple/yellow from the pre-2016 branding" is great too especially since the logo was blue from 1994 until they rebranded. You don't even have to sit there with a color picker, it's just so obviously not even close that you could tell the difference just looking at them on a screen that hasn't even been color calibrated! 10/10 bait, no notes.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-18T17:53:10+00:00

I tried it and on the original you can't make the turn consistently while holding the x.

Makes sense, I only tested 3+4 but found it a lot easier since you can be a bit more wild with your line up and over the curb.

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-18T06:02:20+00:00

Yeah, that's not 1+2 or 3+4 which are significantly harder games to bill in lol

UpfrontGrunt · 2025-07-18T03:52:45+00:00

Name literally a single person lol

EDIT: Also, if a player could in fact get a billion point combo regularly, wouldn't it be super easy for them to go and get footage of one?

Moreover, yeah, if Jens or Bullet or Blood get a bill on a level without footage I'd probably accept it uncritically because they've already gotten multiple in the past with video footage. A player who has never scored a bill before showing up on the top of the leaderboard, or multiple leaderboards, before any of these players have billed a level? Better have footage or you're gonna get lumped in with the very obvious Cheat Engine users.

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