You can be a hero in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 by saving Painter Neal between all your sick grinding and tricks.
During Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4’s campaign, the San Francisco level is one of the first in which you need to complete specific goals to unlock the next locations. Even though the “Save the Painter Neal!!!” mission was present in the original game, the steps to complete it changed considerably in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 version.
To assist you in ticking off items in the missions list and progressing in the game, we prepared this Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 guide explaining how to save Painter Neal.
How to save Painter Neal in THPS 4
As the initial introduction of the San Francisco map explains, Painter Neal is a man in trouble at the pier. If you don’t save him, well, Neal will become the next meal of a giant shark who’s just waiting for the poor man to fall into the water. You can save them with the power of skateboarding.
The first step is to break the wire holding a large boulder in front of the pier. To do so, you need to slide all over it from one side to the other, which means keeping balance while your character goes up, around, and then down from the wire.
The best strategy to break the wire is to hold your character in place right in front of one of the wire’s ends, jump, and start sliding. If you don’t cover the entire length of the wire, it won’t break. If you’re struggling to get across the full length, consider turning a couple of mods on. To activate them, pause the game and access the Option menu, where you find the Game Mods section. Using mods doesn’t affect the completion of challenges and you can turn them off whenever you feel like.
With the boulder released, you still need to give it a push so it will roll toward the pier and save the painter in distress. Although simple, pushing the giant sphere requires you to perform a specific move: a wallplant, which involves placing a foot on a wall.
Like when starting to slide over the wire, the best starting position to hit the boulder with a wallplant is by stopping next to it while facing the pier. When ready, perform an ollie then a wallplant.
If you need more help completing this mission, you can go to the settings and change the wallplant command options. You want to go with the more straightforward option that sets the ollie button to perform the wallplant as well. For example, on PlayStation 5, you will be using the X button for both actions. By using this specific configuration, you just need to do an ollie and then press the same button right after to automatically execute a wallplant.
The boulder will roll toward the pier and save Painter Neal, crossing this mission off your to-do list.
