Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

"Good skating action"

The special quality behind Tony Hawk Proskater 2 is the search for the perfect line. Tony Hawk gives you only 2 minutes to complete the goals in a level, so you must gather as many points as possible in the most proficient manner possible. Thus begins the prowl for finding a path --- a path through the course that has as many trickable objects laid out in a row so you can pull off loads of tricks. Since the courses are huge, filled with hundreds of objects, finding that perfect line capable of producing 8, 9, 10 tricks in a row is very elusive. But, when you do, of the joy. You may spend hours skating around, contemplating which object to trick off next, desperately looking for something to continue the trick combo. Instead of wall riding on the wall and heading towards the left, maybe a grind off the metal rail to the right will eventually score more? But the path will suddenly materialize, and you'll feel more than happiness or joy; you'll feel this overwhelming sense of satisfaction from the fact that you finally did it. All the tools were laid out in front of you, the course was meticulously designed, but you finally pulled off a huge combo in one beautiful sequence.

A newfound respect must be given to professional skaters for the acrobatic trickery they perform on a daily basis. If you watch skaters on TV, you may yawn at the seemingly unimpressive physical stunts that fans and judges praise as ingenious. Simple stunts, such as jumping the skateboard off the ground while rotating 360 degrees, looks just too easy to get any praise. It's not. First of all, you need the guts of a daredevil to even attempt the daring stunts; second, these stunts require a considerable amount of balance and manual dexterity. But, this is the beauty of Tony Hawk Proskater 2. It makes you FEEL the effort in pulling off the advanced stunts.

Your hands will cramp up time-and-time-again from the frenetic button pounding. How many games make you hold down a button to gain speed, release it to jump, then, while in the air, hold another to start spinning; then once spinning, do the fancy trickery as seen on TV, and finally, when gravity takes over, let go of the spin button at just the right moment to land the skater properly? Not many. But while all that sounds daunting, the real work occurs during that stage when you're floating in the air, during that fancy trickery stage where you're free to carry out all kinds of tricks. Everything from bahamas, to nosebirds, to special moves like the 900 --- each one is a strain on the fingers, but they also pique the brain. For each trick has its own timing feel, so you have to mentally calculate which trick to do so you're skater won't miss-time the landing and crack open his skull. No small task with so many tricks available.

Since the meat of the game occurs in the courses, they definitely need a fresh quality to them so they won't feel stale after repeated plays during the career mode. Laid out on a raggedy flier, as if you're some scrub looking for a place to skate, you're given a list of goals to complete for cash. Of course, the top three goals for every course consists of doing combos and scoring a lot of points, but the rest make you search for and collect various goodies. Such as five letters that spell the word S-K-A-T-E, or themed objects like tiny airplanes in the Hangar level or little golden bells in the Schoolyard. All of them are scattered throughout the courses in well-hidden areas, while some are placed high into the air, only accessible with a well-placed jump. $500 for scoring 50,000 points, $200 for grinding specific rails, etc… the sole purpose for earning cash in Career mode is to beef up your skating ability. Because in the beginning, you'll be a talent-less scrub, unable to do anything serious in the world of skating. You may grunt and put forth a lot of effort, but your skateboard will jump just a few inches off the ground, you'll try to do a couple spins, but your body will only flounder wildly in the air. You won't impress anybody and judges will give you terrible scores. But soon, cash will start rolling in that generates more air to your jumps, or makes your spinning tighter, makes you balance a lot easier on the grinds. And with the grand scale of the courses, you'll need all the help you can get.

For instance, the New York City course resembles the real city but the intriguing part of the course design is the way in which the objects relate with each other to create a beautiful arrangement of trickable objects --- yet still hold on to the New York theme. You can barely see a few feet in front of you because of the New York darkness that hovers over the city, the New York subway train screams around the course, startling you for just a moment, but for us skaters, a trick system lies through all that New York-ness. Get revenge at the loud subway by building up speed and grinding the long length of the subway rails in a glorious ride through the level, as if you were on a site seeing tour. Hop off and find something else to trick off. Indeed every single course in Tony Hawk Proskater 2, not only has some unique quality inside to give you thrills, not only has a general theme that places you exactly where the level wants you to go, but they all have the perfect line that enables you to string together many tricks in a row to get that high score.

Because that's the heart of the game. You apply the tricks described earlier into the brilliant level designs to score points. To score the high points, you may input dozens of commands (up, down, b for a boneless; left, a for a muhala; down X for a kickflip) all in the space of roughly 4 seconds. You'll be smashing the buttons, doing trick after trick, but in a frame of time so small, you'll shocked by the deftness of your fingers. Apply this same amount of pure work to a fighting game. Imagine executing a combo so long that you pummel your opponent with a flurry of fists and legs that takes his entire life; but then, even while your opponent lies unconscious, you continue to input commands to lengthen the amazing combo that kills him when he wakes up for the 2nd round!

Obviously, that analogy is far-fetched, as that would never happen in a fighting game, nevertheless can you imagine the emotion you would feel if you could kill your opponent (twice!) with one long combo? That's EXACTLY what you'll experience when playing Tony Hawk Proskater 2. No wonder the game is so popular.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/09/04