Tony Hawk's Underground

"A Skateboard game with a story? Unpossible!"

The sports genre of games has been around for a long times, yet the skate game is a fairly new addition to the sports family. Tony Hawk has released yet another addition to his skate family of games *this being the fifth*. However, instead of just rehashing the same gameplay styles from previous title and a graphics over haul, THUG offers new styles and trick sets, more realism and an expanded Create-A-Character mode. There are plenty of new characters to unlock, boards to create and levels to complete to keep fans and new comers happy for a long time. However, not all is perfect in THUG. However, with a new game comes big changes and the biggest one of all is perhaps the most fun: The inclusion of a coherent story.

I've played several sports games, mostly snowboarding and skateboarding games and none of them have a coherent story. THUG definitely breaks the mold when it comes to this. THUGs story, while not award winning by any means, is a welcome addition to this genre of game. Instead of just going through stages and completing goals seemingly at random, THUG thrusts you into the role of an aspiring pro skateboarder from the slums of New Jersey. Your best friend shadows you through out the game playing the role of motivation and the games antagonist later on. Between stages and levels you're treated with cutscenes linking each stage to the next, showing your characters progression from nobody to national skater super star. As I said, the story in THUG, while welcome, won't win any awards, but there's enough of a story to keep you playing and surprisingly, there are no plot holes, just a few a few leaps of faith. Going from no body to pro in just a few months? There's no sense of time, so the player is forced to either assume that the story and game take place over several weeks/months or that your character really just go from no one to pro in about 4 days time.

The Tony Hawk series has always been known for great gameplay and THUG doesn't disappoint, though, there are a few things with the Gamecube version that really rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I'm just too indoctrinated with using the control stick, but being forced to use the analog stick in this kind of game is border line criminal. Most of the time when I wanted to perform a specific trick, the stick was just slightly off the mark and I ended up either performing a different trick or off alignment and doing something completely different. It's not a huge deal and if you prefer the analog stick to the D pad, then you definitely won't have a problem here. But for me, the inability to use the D pad was a major mark against THUG. Unfortunately, it wasn't the first and it wasn't the last.

In terms of how the game plays, I have no complaints. THUG is a major improvement over the other installments in Mr. Hawks game giant. Instead of being forced to either complete a certain amount of goals in a short amount of time or roaming around a fairly empty environment to find the person with the goal, you are given a fairly fleshed out gaming stage. True, there are still boundaries, but there are cars, people, birds, even weather effects to give a sense of realism to the game. The tricks are varied and usually fairly easy to perform. As you progress, you unlock more special trick slots and eventually you can create your own special tricks. So if you're dying to have your Create-A-Character perform some mind boggling trick that defies physics, you now have your chance.

As far as the Create-A-Character goes, this game seems to be designed with a male character in mind. The guys have more faces, more hair styles, better looking character models and I'm pretty sure they actually have shadows. A female model just feels lacking, with fewer face types to choose from and an over all feeling of "hey, there may be girls out there who play. Let's just add in a female character engine, but eh, not to much detail." Fear not ladies, if you do make a female character, you'll have a few skirts and daisy duke shorts to choose from. There are even pink flower prints to add to your clothes! Other than that, the Character creation is fairly broad and lets you tweak your character to how you want to play. You can set your own skills and tricks, you can choose to either be a vert *half pipe and ramps* skater or a street *focusing on rails and flat land tricks, called manuals* skater. As the game goes on, you can even create your own board, adding yet another level of customization to this game.

Your character starts off with an even balance of stat points, being just slightly below average in everything, from how well they do turns in the air to how long they can stay on a rail or hold a lip trick. However, you control just how good your character gets in any given stat. To raise a stat, you must perform certain actions. To get better at rail grinding, you start off by having to hold a grind for a certain amount of seconds. To be able to go higher in jumps, you must jump and travel a certain distance. The stat challenges as they are called get harder as you progress through the game. You can't just become a superstar and max out all stats in the first stage. You can reach a certain level and then you hit a block until you go amateur and then again when you pro. If you're good enough, your character could eventually have maxed out stats in everything. However, this use of the "leveling" system lets people tweak their characters to how they play. If you're more of a half pipe player, it will be easy for you to max out your flip and height stats and you may have to work a bit to get your manual and speed stats up to par.

The challenges in the game are fairly moderate in difficulty and you only have to complete a percentage of challenges to move on to the next segment of the story. If a certain challenge is to tough for you to complete, end it and go on to another, more appropriate challenge. The difficulty scales up as you go from no name to pro, with starter challenges really just introducing you to the game and how to play it with later challenges testing your "skills" and asking you to do some very insane tricks. However, in my experience, this game as one of the hardest last stages ever to grace a sports game. The last two stages just up the difficulty to an insane level. To me, this is one of the worst things a game can do. I guess it serves its purpose of making the finale memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. You don't want to remember the end of a game by how many hairs you pulled out and how many controllers you had to break. If it weren't for this a few other minor details, THUG would have gotten a slightly better score. However, even though I really enjoy THUG, the last parts of the game just drop the score. If it weren't for my enjoyment of the game, THUG could easily be scored a 5 or 6. Be warned before you play.

Playing the Gamecube version, you can really see where the game is lacking in the graphics department. By no means an ugly game, it's just that the cube version has the lowest graphics of each release of THUG. The cutscenes are still good, but with hollow mouths and bland character facial expressions, You can feel the age of the game. The environments for the most part of crisp and clean. You can see all the different areas and the stages resemble their name sakes very well. You feel like you're skating the slums of Jersey or grinding the rails in Moscow. However, again, the cubes graphic engine and the age of the game bring down the score slightly. The game is plagued with random popping of scenery and a fairly low sight distance. The game attempts to hide this by having enclosed stages for the most part. However, when you do get outside and are in the open, the stages get a bit blurry the farther out you look. Not where you are skating, but the outlying areas. Not a major problem, but still. If graphics are your main concern, you'd probably be happier with the PS2 or XBox version of the game.

Another minor note and sort of a peeve of mine is the blood. Now, I'm not really all into the gore and blood scene. It was novel when Mortal Kombat did it years ago and now it seems like some games just go over board with it. However, if you're going to put it into your game, please, at least make it look real. Have it actually seem like a bodily fluid and not just some strange orange glob magically spewing out of my characters head. THUG does gore tastefully and it's never over done, but it just looks out of place. If you have a fall and crack your head, instead of treated to a minor show of blood, orange globs are thrown from your head, travel a foot or two and disappear. It's not a big deal and I'm glad that the blood part was played down, however, it just looks way to fake and corny in game.

Other than that, the game plays smoothly with no lag and every thing is very crisp. Vibrant colors and sharp environments make this game a breeze to play. You're never wondering just exactly what you can skate on or where you can go. You can see exactly what you're doing and where you're going. You can see it all.

I'll say this for THUG, it has one killer sound track. There are three genres of music that play through the game: Alternative, Rock/Pop and Hip Hop. You can change this around and remove songs if you want. If you hate alternative but love Hip Hop, you can have it so that you never have to listen to alternative and your favorite hip hop songs play more often. There are some big name bands that lent their talents to this game and the tracks offered give a great back ground to this game while you're skating. The sound levels and music levels are changeable, so if you want fewer falling and pain sounds and higher music levels, you can have it and vice versa.

The voice acting is fairly well done with a variety of accents and voices for each of the characters. The major skating celebrities lend their voices for the game, so you're treated to authentic voices when you're talking with their in game counter parts. The sounds are never drowned out nor do they ever become to much. Instead, they blend together well to give a sense of realism to the game. Cars honk, dogs bark, birds chirp and skaters say "whoa". All in all, the sounds of THUG are very well done.

THUG is a blast to play for any fan of the skating genre and should be a fine addition to any gaming library. However, there are a few glaring problems with this version of the game and with the game in general. The insane difficulty of the last 2 stages, the lower graphics quality and the sorta rushed feel to some of the character creation aspects, while annoying, don't lower the enjoyment too much while playing. However, I will say, that I do enjoy this type of game and my own enjoyment raised the score a bit. If I didn't like some parts as much as I did, THUG would easily have been scored a 5 or 6, a fairly average game plagued with a few problems. However, THUG still stands as one of the best Skate games on the market. Definitely pick this game up if you can find it *which shouldn't be very hard* and are a fan of the skating genre. If you're not a fan but want to try a new type of game, start with THUG first. It offers more in the way of a realistic skating experience and will soon having you wish you could be a pro skater. Just don't try some of the tricks at home and you should be fine.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/26/06