Tony Hawk's Underground 2
Still fun after six games? You'd better effing believe it. Just don't expect something revolutionary.
Published: October 8, 2004
Few series have survived wholly intact for six iterations. The Madden NFL games seem to get better every year, and they're certainly selling like crazy, but if that's the high water mark for games, then Neversoft is well on its way to clearing it. With each successive game, the Woodland Hills, CA-based developer seems to add something to the Tony Hawk franchise that old games seem somehow incomplete without.
Tony 2 added the manual, allowing grinds to be linked together. Tony 3 gave us the revert, further linking vert tricks into combo chains. Tony 4 added spine transfers to transition from one bowl-shaped object to the next and removed the previous games' 2 minute limit, opening up the series to hugely explorable levels and massive skate lines. The first Tony Hawk's Underground not only added the ability to finally get off your board and interact with the environment (as well as keeping a combo going if you got back on in time), but launched a huge new direction for the game, allowing you play as yourself as you progressed through a lengthy story mode chronicling your rise from skater punk to professional... uh, skater punk.
So here you are, professional skater, pulled from your cozy abode and invited to an ultra-exclusive event, the World Destruction Tour. Tony Hawk and Bam Margera have picked teams, and the object is, obviously, destruction. Whoever can cause the most mayhem across the will win the event, and loser pays for both teams. For the full skinny, check out our preview.
And thus begins your new adventure. Since there have already been five games -- and for the love of God, if you haven't played any of the previous games, get your head examined and pick up any of the past ones; most of 'em are Greatest Hits sellers many times over, and shouldn't cost you more than $20 -- I won't go over how to play it. For that, hit up our reviews section and give 'er a read. What I will mention is the addition for this game: the sticker slap. Tapping X when you hit a wall will tag it with a sticker and send you in the opposite direction -- perfect for reversing combo lines to basically make them infinite if you're good enough.
Other than bigger combos (which, realistically, has been the big advancement for competitive players since the game started), there's really not too much new here, and that's really the problem. Yes, everything about the second THUG has returned to the classic Neversoft flavor of being irreverent, a bit abusive and completely in line with everything that skating is about. The problem is, after five games, things are more than balanced, levels are absolutely packed to the brim with lines that would make a skater weep, and the graphics are as good as the series has ever seen, but things are just getting a little stale.
Even with the re-introduction of Classic Mode, which brings back all the things that made the first three games "just one more try" affairs, there's still a feeling that levels are all too familiar, even after exploring them for the first time. No, the lines aren't new, nor are the specific goals to progress through the story mode, but the freshness that I felt was waning in the last THUG really does seem to be gone.
That's not to say the games aren't good; depending on how you view the goals, the level designs and ways to use them are the best the series has ever seen. The graphics are about as good as the PlayStation 2 is going to see for the series, with incredibly dense level architecture that really does emphasize all three dimensions to make from multiple levels of play, and textures that are varied, detailed and clean. Animations are tight, refined and wonderfully fluid.
The problem is, there are still some major issues with the overall presentation. The on-foot controls where you get off your board and hang from ledges and climb ladders (or objects that resemble ladders like debris chutes) are clunky, far too sloppy and show almost no refinement from the previous games. Clipping issues still show up, especially on the bails from characters on vehicles, and things still have the general feeling of a game that progressed from an original PlayStation title into the next generation without really moving too far forward.
The audio has similarly made basic, but stunted upgrades. The sound effects on different surfaces and the separation on channels with the surround sound is fantastic, and the list of songs is as varied as you'll ever get from this game (Jonny Cash? Less Than Jake? Jimmy Eat World?), but largely it's more of what you're going to expect here. The voice acting (taken from the real skaters) is great, and perfectly melds with the attitude of the game -- even the special guest skaters are solid.
Again, though it's all been largely heard before, and it echoes the feeling of the overall game. I remarked in our original THUG review that I felt like the soul of the series was gone. The soul seems to have returned to the host, but the host is becoming a withered husk of its former self, and without a major overhaul of skating that makes gamers remember that before Neversoft there was no such thing as a real representation of skating in video game form, things may continue to spiral downward.
This is not by any means a bad game. If you weigh all the advancements and refinements, it's probably the best in the series, as all the previous games have been over the others, but things are starting to feel more than a bit tired, and for those of us that idolized Tony Hawk well before he pulled a 900 and soared into the limelight, I think it's time we got just a little bit more in the way of advancement and progression for the genre (which Neversoft completely owns at this point). The team in place absolutely has the talent and resources to do so, it's just a matter of seeing whether or not they ditch the constant cash flow and go back to basics, or keep raking in the cash.
Buy this game, if only for the fact that it's the best of its kind, but like me, you'll probably find that after pouring literally dozens of hours into the game, you'll find yourself searching for something a bit meatier, and I don't just mean bigger combos and larger levels, but something that really revamps the genre like it did almost five years ago.
Tony 2 added the manual, allowing grinds to be linked together. Tony 3 gave us the revert, further linking vert tricks into combo chains. Tony 4 added spine transfers to transition from one bowl-shaped object to the next and removed the previous games' 2 minute limit, opening up the series to hugely explorable levels and massive skate lines. The first Tony Hawk's Underground not only added the ability to finally get off your board and interact with the environment (as well as keeping a combo going if you got back on in time), but launched a huge new direction for the game, allowing you play as yourself as you progressed through a lengthy story mode chronicling your rise from skater punk to professional... uh, skater punk.
So here you are, professional skater, pulled from your cozy abode and invited to an ultra-exclusive event, the World Destruction Tour. Tony Hawk and Bam Margera have picked teams, and the object is, obviously, destruction. Whoever can cause the most mayhem across the will win the event, and loser pays for both teams. For the full skinny, check out our preview.
And thus begins your new adventure. Since there have already been five games -- and for the love of God, if you haven't played any of the previous games, get your head examined and pick up any of the past ones; most of 'em are Greatest Hits sellers many times over, and shouldn't cost you more than $20 -- I won't go over how to play it. For that, hit up our reviews section and give 'er a read. What I will mention is the addition for this game: the sticker slap. Tapping X when you hit a wall will tag it with a sticker and send you in the opposite direction -- perfect for reversing combo lines to basically make them infinite if you're good enough.
Other than bigger combos (which, realistically, has been the big advancement for competitive players since the game started), there's really not too much new here, and that's really the problem. Yes, everything about the second THUG has returned to the classic Neversoft flavor of being irreverent, a bit abusive and completely in line with everything that skating is about. The problem is, after five games, things are more than balanced, levels are absolutely packed to the brim with lines that would make a skater weep, and the graphics are as good as the series has ever seen, but things are just getting a little stale.
Even with the re-introduction of Classic Mode, which brings back all the things that made the first three games "just one more try" affairs, there's still a feeling that levels are all too familiar, even after exploring them for the first time. No, the lines aren't new, nor are the specific goals to progress through the story mode, but the freshness that I felt was waning in the last THUG really does seem to be gone.
That's not to say the games aren't good; depending on how you view the goals, the level designs and ways to use them are the best the series has ever seen. The graphics are about as good as the PlayStation 2 is going to see for the series, with incredibly dense level architecture that really does emphasize all three dimensions to make from multiple levels of play, and textures that are varied, detailed and clean. Animations are tight, refined and wonderfully fluid.
The problem is, there are still some major issues with the overall presentation. The on-foot controls where you get off your board and hang from ledges and climb ladders (or objects that resemble ladders like debris chutes) are clunky, far too sloppy and show almost no refinement from the previous games. Clipping issues still show up, especially on the bails from characters on vehicles, and things still have the general feeling of a game that progressed from an original PlayStation title into the next generation without really moving too far forward.
The audio has similarly made basic, but stunted upgrades. The sound effects on different surfaces and the separation on channels with the surround sound is fantastic, and the list of songs is as varied as you'll ever get from this game (Jonny Cash? Less Than Jake? Jimmy Eat World?), but largely it's more of what you're going to expect here. The voice acting (taken from the real skaters) is great, and perfectly melds with the attitude of the game -- even the special guest skaters are solid.
Again, though it's all been largely heard before, and it echoes the feeling of the overall game. I remarked in our original THUG review that I felt like the soul of the series was gone. The soul seems to have returned to the host, but the host is becoming a withered husk of its former self, and without a major overhaul of skating that makes gamers remember that before Neversoft there was no such thing as a real representation of skating in video game form, things may continue to spiral downward.
This is not by any means a bad game. If you weigh all the advancements and refinements, it's probably the best in the series, as all the previous games have been over the others, but things are starting to feel more than a bit tired, and for those of us that idolized Tony Hawk well before he pulled a 900 and soared into the limelight, I think it's time we got just a little bit more in the way of advancement and progression for the genre (which Neversoft completely owns at this point). The team in place absolutely has the talent and resources to do so, it's just a matter of seeing whether or not they ditch the constant cash flow and go back to basics, or keep raking in the cash.
Buy this game, if only for the fact that it's the best of its kind, but like me, you'll probably find that after pouring literally dozens of hours into the game, you'll find yourself searching for something a bit meatier, and I don't just mean bigger combos and larger levels, but something that really revamps the genre like it did almost five years ago.
