Tony Hawk's Underground 2 : Games : Web Wombat

Since 1999 "The Birdman" (Tony Hawk) has been dominating the best seller charts with the Pro Skater games and more recently, the Tony Hawk Underground edition, otherwise known as "THUG".

Not surprisingly "Santa Hawk" has dropped another "egg" into the arsenal of skate games. It's called Tony Hawk's Underground 2, or THUG2.

THUG2 builds on the first edition by experimenting with some new features and modes. The THUG2 story mode which is the core of the game, kicks off just after your victory in THUG1.

However, your victory skate is short lived due to an hilarious kidnapping at the hands of Bam Margera and Tony Hawk. Margera and Hawk want you to participate in the World Destruction tour, which involves some of the best skaters around. Your Victory in THUG1 is why you're allocated to Tony's team.

It's the Hawk crew vs. the Bam Margera crew in a highly destructive street skate comp which globe trots from country to country.

Skating tricks, property destruction, disturbing the peace, reckless endangerment, graffiti, B+E and many other colourful activities require completion in order for you to keep your seat on the "World Destruction Tour". One such skate task is to score a 5000 point trick on a full-size half pipe which is strapped to the back of a moving truck. It's extreme, and it's crazy.

Another more destructive task that springs to mind is the Barcelona level where, after pelting pedestrians with tomatoes, you are then required to pelt the rotten fruit at a caged bull in order to infuriate old bully, so that he eventually gets so angry that he busts through the cage and rampages through the city for the remainder of the level, Pamplona style.

It's set pieces like these that make the game entertaining, and the variety of different things to see and do is quite good, and keeps the game from getting tedious. And for those who haven't played the 'Underground' Tony Hawk games yet, a few new gameplay elements have been added over the standard Pro Skater games.

You now have the ability to pick up your board and run with it, create a custom tag and spray it on vertical surfaces and you can even pickup objects and throw them about, including apples and stuff.

Create your own custom tag
(preferably with lots of cussin')

Information is given to you via text messages (SMS) throughout the game and talking to pedestrians in the street will also give you clues as to your objectives.

Occasionally during peak score time, the action will cut to slow motion mode (like Max Payne's bullet-time), and it's a great touch as it rewards players for cracking out manic moves.

It allows you to blissfully observe the technique and style of the massive moves you perform, and show's off just how cool the player models and different tricks are.

Roughly two special guest skaters are located throughout each level in story mode, such as Ben Franklin and Jesse James just to name a couple.

Some of these special guest characters come equipped with a vehicle, such as a mechanical bull or ride-on lawnmower and these vehicles are used in the same way as the skateboards, only they look pretty strange. But they can still be used to do numerous tricks such as grinding and spinning, which is always good for a chuckle.

Classic mode is also available - which is more of a traditional pro skater experience as it uses the same gameplay structure as the original Tony Hawk titles. It features 6 older tracks from the Pro Skater series and all the levels you unlock from the THUG2 campaign.

Like past Hawk games, the locations are good and varied, including skate parks and cities precincts, which are riddled with objects that are almost always grindable. A 30 meter grind on the stair rail, then switch to a 40 meter crooked nose grind on the scaffolding beams, via an ollie impossible 360, switch back to a 100 meter back-side, impossible, handplant, spin whatever, Yo mama, 763 degree! It's mental. Trust me.

The environments are the biggest yet, boast plenty of smashable objects and higher amounts of detail than past games. Geometry-changing level events such as the LA earthquake, seen in Pro Skater 3, are also highly frequent occurrences, which help the game flow and pulse with a more dynamic rhythm.

The overall graphic quality is quite high and rather than the more realistic graphics of the Pro Skater series, THUG2 is more exaggerated and slightly more cartoony, which suits the games attitude well.

Watching big-scoring tricks (not like this
one) in slow motion is a sight for sore eyes

Customisable character creation is back and better than ever, as now you can design your own green-skinned, big headed, skinny bodied, heavily tattooed, big handed, dog collar-wearing skateboarders.

The addition of "hue and saturation" colour sliders allows you to adjust the colour, vividness and brightness of any element of your skateboarder as well.

Soundtrack wise and we are talking "the Bomb!" Damn Straight! Over 50 artists from all sorts of genre's, such as Rock, Hip Hop, Rap, Punk and Metal.

Frank Sinatra's "That's Life" is the stand out track for me and a close second is Metallica's "Whiplash".

The stacks, the bingles, the crashes, the tumbles, the bails, the falls or the mishaps are funny due to the clever character mapping. When you cop a skateboard nose to the goolies, you collapse to the ground, hands grasping the hot spot, in a fairly realistic fashion.

Or when your weight transfer is too heavy on the back wheels, the result is a frantic mid air "backstroke", followed by you landing flat on your back and possibly rupturing your liver and fracturing your vestigial tail. The only minor issue I had with the gameplay was that object detection was hit and miss, and still needs a bit of work, but it doesn't interfere (too much) with the game as a whole.

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is like a caffeinated sugar buzz with a dash of red cordial. It's played at million miles per hour and usually ends in a body jarring, bone snapping, blood spraying smack! There's so much to the game it's hard to describe and explain it all from the confines of this HTML page, but suffice it to say that Neversoft has done it again.

Game: Tony Hawk's Underground 2
System: PS2
Players: 1-2
Online: Yes
Developer: Neversoft (Vicarious Visions)
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is on the shelves now.

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