Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

"Who Needs The Outside World, Anyhow?"

When 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater' (the original game) was released, I paid it no mind. Skating really isn't my thing. But the game found its way into my life regardless, when my roommate Matt brought home a used PlayStation and a copy of 'Tony Hawk.' I thought he was nuts for buying a game console just to play one specific game, especially since it was a skating game and was probably thrown together to cash in on Tony Hawk's name. But being the video game fan that I am, I decided to sit down with him and join in for a few rounds of skating insanity. Months later, after having given hours of my life to both the original 'Tony Hawk' and the sequel on the Dreamcast, I can safely say that Mr. Hawk put his name on a fine, fine product.
For those of you who were unfortunate enough to miss the first game, let me bring you up to speed. 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2' is a sort-of skating simulation, where you guide a famous professional skater (such as Rune Glifberg or Tony Hawk himself) through one of many courses, performing all types of tricks for points. Some skaters excel at vertical skating (doing tricks after leaping from a jump or ramp), some are better at street-style skating (grinding on rails and ledges), and a few are equal at both. Every course has all kinds of buildings, obstacles, fences, gaps, ledges, drops, and all kinds of different things to explore and try to earn points off of. Every single thing on each board can be interacted with, and if you learn to chain tricks together without landing first, you'll get huge scoring bonuses. And since everything can be 'tricked' off of, there are no boundaries to the game play, and you can just skate like a madman all over each area. Finding all of the little secret gaps and such is a lot of fun.
There are a lot of different game modes to explore. Career mode is the most rewarding, as it allows you to earn money for each skater to buy better 'stats,' new tricks, and a wide collection of decks, each with a unique design. Each skating locale has ten goals for your career skater to earn, which vary from earning high scores to collecting various objects, and other such tasks. Career mode is a great way to learn each particular skater and skating area, and if you complete every goal, the game's secret modes and players will begin to be available to you. And if this seems a little too involved for a casual skating session, you can just free skate any area with no time limit, or bring in a pal for one of the game's many two-player modes. Some of the two-player modes include a better trick competition and 'graffiti,' where you 'tag' parts of the park by tricking on them, and steal your opponent's tagged areas by pulling off more valuable tricks on them then your foe did. It's really quite impressive when you think of how many quality game modes the designers came up with for a skateboarding game.
'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2' features a roster of top professional skaters, although if you don't personally follow skateboarding in the real world, that probably won't mean much to you. But there's a good variety of skaters to choose from, with a wide array of 'stats' including air, hang time, rail grinding, landing, spin, and so forth. And you can always make your own custom skater (and even design him or her after yourself, if you like) and put him or her through the career mode to beef up their 'stats' and arsenal of tricks. The skater creation mode is excellent; you get a nice selection of looks and outfits to dress your little skater up as you like, and you can pick from any move in the game if you have enough cash.
As far as game play goes, everything is nice and smooth. It may take you a little while to get used to the physics of the game, and the rhythm required to do tricks (especially the special ones), but once you do, you'll be pulling off crazy moves like a natural. The controls are very responsive and your skater will do exactly what you tell them to. (So when you bail out and crash to a painful halt, you only have yourself to blame.) Even if you have no interest in real-life skating (which is the case with me), the game play in 'Tony Hawk 2' is so well-designed and addictive that you'll be enjoying yourself for hours on end.
The graphics in 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2' are top-notch. The skating areas look amazing, from the bright lights and gritty grime of New York City to the sunny shores of Venice Beach. And the skating animation is dead-on; each trick looks distinctive, and even the skating illiterate like me can soon tell moves apart just by watching them. Before these games, I didn't even know what a 'deck' was, and now I can tell a 'mute' from a 'benihana.' (See? Now I'm no longer a skater know-nothing. Now I'm a skater wanna-be poser.)
The music might be a point of contention for some people. All of the songs are actual rock or hip-hop tracks, by such artists as Public Enemy, Rage Against the Machine, Bad Religion, and many others. I'm not going to say whether or not the music is 'good,' since musical taste varies from person to person. It's all quality stuff, but some people just might not like certain types of music. Either way, the game is so much fun that you can easily ignore any songs you don't like. The sounds are appropriate if not spell-binding... some of the crowd noise in the Mexico stage is very funny, though.
The best way to describe this game, I think, is 'complete.' You get the impression, while playing this game, that the people behind it invested a lot of hard work and dedication to bringing you the most entertaining skating game possible. The game features a million little hidden touches that sparkle with fun and personality. I'm not sure how much the designers of 'Tony Hawk 2' were paid, but they deserved every penny and more, and I hope that they continue to produce more top-quality games in the future.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/00, Updated 11/28/00