Tony Hawk's Underground - Leading You All the Way to Stardom

Author's Rating:

Pros: captivating story mode, 70 tracks, create-a-park mode, loads of multi-player mayhem, very fun game

Cons: stealth levels, on the very short side, no Xbox Live

The Bottom Line: 
Tony Hawk's Underground is the ultimate skateboarding game, as it has truly revolutionized the extreme sports genre. Pick this one up today!

Author's Review
Tony Hawk – a name that is synonymous with the sport of skateboarding, and a man that has redefined the sport itself as well as the extreme sports video game genre. The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series has attracted many gamers around the world due to its amazing gameplay and ability to enthrall audiences. Now any teenage boy or girl can pull off 540 fliptricks, pogo manuals and even grind the Kremlin… only inside the comfort of their living room. Tony Hawk’s Underground follows the tradition of the previous Tony Hawk games, although now you are the newest and hottest thing in the skateboarding world.

Gone are the days when you pick a professional skateboarder, pick a level and skate around while performing various goals scattered throughout levels. In Tony Hawk’s Underground, there is a plot, a good one as a matter of fact. Before you start your adventure, you get to customize a skater. Give him a name, edit his body shape, his facial features, edit his board, pick out an outfit and any accessories that you want. The create-a-skater option is very deep, as there are dozens of shoes, shirts, pants, socks, haircuts, nose-types and gear to choose from. Believe me, it will take a while before you are ready to hit the streets. But when you’re done you will learn that you’re just as unknown skater from New Jersey trying to make it big. You’re first task will be to nab a sponsor, and from there you will be on your way to becoming a professional. Along your journey to success, you’ll be constantly bickering with Eric Sparrow, your “best friend”, and you will traverse through locales such as Hawaii, Tampa, Moscow and Vancouver.

The gameplay itself is amazing. At first you’ll be lost and confused, but after a few minutes, you’ll be grinding, doing manuals and performing all kinds of combos. The control scheme was well done, as Y is for grinding, A is for crouching, X and Y are for flips and grabs. You can also perform spine transfers, wallrides and all kinds of manuals. While you skate, you can also “skitch a ride”, which means that you can hold onto the back of a car and it will just drag you along. But what makes Tony Hawk’s Underground so revolutionary is the ability to get off your skateboard. Yes folks, you can run around, climb stairs and intertwine combos with the “caveman” (when you get off a board) for an amazingly high score. Once again the ‘special’ meter makes a return, and when you fill it up you can perform many various special tricks such as the McTwist.

At each locale, you get to skate around and have as much fun as you want to, including grinding electric wires as well as Soviet tanks. However, scattered throughout each locale are various goals that you must perform in order to proceed to the next level. Most of these goals involve doing things like getting a certain score in a certain amount of time, doing certain tricks over various landmarks or finding your group of wasted buddies. There are also a few driving missions, which were fairly were developed and goals included smashing X number of pineapple stands in Hawaii. However, there were also two stealth missions. In these stealth missions, you had to reach a certain destination without being seen by anyone. These levels were not executed well, and they did not fit in with the theme of the rest of the game. I felt that these could have been avoided.

Each city also has a challenge, which is where a pro skateboarder will challenge you to get ‘special’ and perform some form of extremely difficult trick. Even on the easy difficulty, these were very hard to pull off, yet fortunately they are not mandatory to move on with the plot. Each locale also features dozens of gaps, which are fun to look around for and discover. Finally, there is a ‘secret tape’ in each level, which is extremely hard to find. If you do so, you can unlock extra levels (such as the School for Pro Skater II), extra characters and video footage. Speaking of video footage, there is a lot of footage of pro skaters and skateboarding companies in this game. At one point, when you must pick a sponsor, you see a video from each of the major skateboarding companies, and when you pick one you get as much free gear from that company as you want, including all kinds of boards and clothes.

Another innovative concept behind this game is the way that your character becomes better. In Tony Hawk’s Underground, as you perform long grinds, your grind skill increases, unlike previous titles where you purchased statistics upgrades. This is the first game that I played that used this system, and I believe that many more will follow in its footsteps.

This story mode is the bread and butter of Tony Hawk’s Underground and it is a very enjoyable thrill ride… while it lasts. Unfortunately, it is a rather short thrill ride, as it took me less than about ten hours to beat the whole things. Although there are four modes of difficulty, the game is not really challenging unless you play on the hardest mode.

Besides the story modes, there are also a lot of other modes thrown in. First of all, you can pick out your created skaters or any of the famous pros included (even Tony Hawk himself) and go out and ‘free skate’ any locales that you have unlocked in story mode. If you choose to, you can even try to go for high scores. Here, you are given two minutes to pull off as many tricks as possible and your scores will then be piled up and the top three will be shown. If you are looking to kill some time or are a high score maniac, then this will keep you entertained for a while.

Neversoft went all out this year, as they have included plenty of other modes as well. Not only can you create a skater, but you can create a deck, move or even a park. In create a deck, you choose all of the colors, designs and images to create a truly personal deck. In create a move, you can make a signature move by combining various flips and grabs. Some many spend hours and hours on perfected an amazing trick, although it may be confusing for some and they might never come back to it again. What amazed me the most was the create a park mode. Here you select the size of your plot of land, select the time of day and then add as many objects as you like. You can add ramps, swimming pools, buildings, tanks, rails in every shape and direction possible, trees, stairs and anything else that your little heart desires. Then you can add goals in your created park, and can then skate around, go for high scores and attempt to complete your own goals. This mode is extremely fun.

As for the multi-player aspect, I have some bad and good news. The bad news is that there is no Xbox Live support. The good news is that there is plenty of split-screen and even system link action to last you until the next Tony Hawk game comes out. In Trick Attack, you and a friend get two minutes and the person with highest score at the end wins. Score Challenge is the same thing but the first person to reach a certain amount of points wins. In Slap!, you skate around and try to slap each other and the person with the most slaps wins. That is a fun chasing game. Combo Mambo is where the person with highest-scoring combo wins, while in Horse you play Horse skateboarding style, I’m sure you understand it. There’s also Firefight (involves shooting fireballs in the air), Graffiti and King of the Hill. As you can see, there are plenty of modes. Unfortunately, two players is the maximum.

The graphics department did a good job with this game. The locales are perfect – the imagery might not be stunning, although it is perfect for an extreme sports title. All of the cities very well made, especially Moscow and I’m sure the next Tony Hawk game will be just as good. The character models were above average, yet this game shines during the create-a-skater stage, as the choices and amount of detail are endless. The tricks and grinds themselves are animated fluidly and appear realistic from a non-skater’s point of view, and this is all that you can ask from a skateboarding game. The animations in the cut-scenes were also nice, although the computer players look a bit dull when talking. The extra footage that was shot specifically for this game from the sponsors and skaters is also top-notch.

The audio department should also get a round of applause. When you are playing this game, you hear lots and lots of various music in the background. Unsurprisingly, Tony Hawk’s Underground features 70 songs, and it is bound to please everyone. There’s plenty of hip-hop, as cool cats like Aceyalone (this is where I first heard about him and know love his stuff), Nas, J-Live, Jurassic 5 and Cannibal Ox. There’s Kiss for older rock fans, NOFX for the punk generation, as well as famous bands like Sublime and Jane’s Addiction. However, most of the tracks are bands like Electric Frankenstein, Nike V and the Rats, Blind Iris and others, which are bands I’ve never heard. You even get the option of electing to either listen solely to tracks that you like or use a custom soundtrack. The character dialogue was well done, and all of the pros in the game sounded like their real-life counterparts. The sound effects were also well done to my knowledge, as all of the flips, grinds and falls sounded real to me. It was funny to hear your character scream “Owl, my ankle” and grab it after a nasty fall, or hear the sound of your board split in two. I must also warn you that there are a few swear words here and there.

Overall, Tony Hawk’s Underground is an extreme sports masterpiece, and ranks up there will the SSX series. There are plenty of innovative little quirks, a terrific and captivating story mode, amazingly detailed create-a-skater-deck-park-move modes, almost a dozen multi-player modes, nice footage and a grandiose soundtrack. Had the story mode been a bit longer, this game would’ve seemed perfected, however I’ll have to give it a 4.7/5, which I’ll round to a 5. I recommend this game to everyone, even if you are not a skateboarding fan because the gameplay is amazing and welcoming to all. Extreme sports fans must buy this as soon as possible, while others should atleast rent it. It just might turn out to be the most fun you’ve ever had.