Indeed, the demo feels and plays wonderfully. I do have a bit of misgiving over using the original Warehouse as a vertical slice for gameplay - it's always been so constrained and way too simple on anything that wasn't the original game - but this is definitely a very good start. I know a lot of people (Rad Rat among them) were absolutely in hysterics over the way that the game looked in terms of physics, but I think it was probably Vicarious Visions using some form of THPS HD/THPS5 codebase in the first showings of gameplay due to COVID, and from what I've played, there is no traces of those physics in the game.
It's also nice to see that the game ruins well on a base PS4. Targeting a locked 60 FPS seems to have played out wonderfully, I haven't seen a single drop in terms of performance in the 30 or so minutes that I've played of it.
It's...interesting watching the intro cinematic again and seeing some of the dichotomy between the young(er) skaters that are still semi-active (Koston, Glifberg and Reynolds / Steamer especially) getting HD clips, and some of the others that have been less active (Rodney, Muska, Kareem especially) getting older clips used.
I have no doubt that this game will sell well, and will have good legs after launch. I also wouldn't be surprised if they try to leverage an expansion of THPS3 levels and add in Bam, even though by this point, he's a sweaty meatball of a man that spends more time eating Wawa chicken caesar wraps and causing mud then anything.
I'm also pleasantly surprised, and a tad relieved, that even though the game is seemingly a full fledged remake, right down the bones, it's being priced, at least in Canada, for the reasonable price of 60 bucks for the base game, and 70 for the digital deluxe edition. Considering how most base new games in Canada cost 80 bucks (and regularly balloon to 90 or 100 with taxes included) and considering the likely potential in games next generation being 90 bucks to start with, it's really nice to see that I'm not getting ruined in terms of new game purchases.