The standards of comparison for this review were the existing Tony Hawk games that are backward-compatible the Xbox 360 as well as other $15 Xbox Live Arcade games.
When you compare the limited package that THPS HD offers to other $15 downloadable games like Trials Evolution, which features a track editor, local multiplayer, a downloadable level hub, 60+ stock levels, etc.), it's clear that THPS HD fails to offer the same amount of content as other similarly priced games on the XBLA marketplace.
Furthermore, most of the content in this game is already available on the Xbox 360 if you have a copy of THPS 2X and THPS3 for the Xbox 1. In fact, you could pickup both of those games together for less than the $15 this new HD remake is asking, and you would be getting a ton more content for your money since THPS HD is missing so many levels, modes, skaters and songs from the original games.
Add in a number of major technical issues with the framerate, screen tearing, stuttering, clipping, collision detection, physics, etc., plus a controller that simply wasn't built to handle this type of gameplay, and that is why this game scored as low as it did.
It had nothing to do with me sucking at the game.