"I thought it was gonna be good.."

''I wanted to like this game... I really did..''
Tony Hawk Underground. The fifth installment of Neversoft's best selling series, does this game live up to the hype it's predesesor made for it?
When I took the game out of it's case, and slipped it into my Gamecube, I was expecting the greatest game ever, the way the magazines were talking about it. It could be that I'm not all that into a 'quest to become a pro skater', or that I just REALLY hate the soundtrack..
To put it simply, no, it did not live up to the hype. No it did not.

''Holy crap.. whats wrong with his face?''
Graphics:
Graphics have never been important to me, in any game, so they aren't aren't affecting the final score much.
During the play sequences the graphics are good, and well cut, the backgrounds and such are a little worse. Everything else isn't that good, expefcially people, during cutscenes when you see the people.. ew.. sort of like GTA's claw hands.. only with faces.. other than the whole ugly face thing, the graphics are suprisingly well done.
7/10

''Oh my God.. make my ears stop bleeding!''
Sound/Music:
This is going to be a bit biased, because, to be frank, I absolutely can not stand punk music. There's something about a singer whining about his problem while playing three chords on a guitar. It also has a lot of hip-hop, which I can stand, and a tiny bit of Rock/Other.
The sounds are decent, there really aren't going to be many sounds while your skate boarding anyays, theres the 'shwick' of the boarding when you ollie, and that horrible grinding noise when you.. grind. The voices are good, if not a bit annoying, and you get to heat a kid say 'l337'. That's always a plus.
2/10 or if you like punk music 8/10

''Hey I got an idea! Let's make so only half the stuff they do is even remotely related to skateboarding!''
Gameplay:
Ugh. The skating part is nearly identical to the previous four installments, you got your flip tricks, and your Grabs, and your grinds.. yeah, it's pretty much the same thing as before. The main thing that gets me in this, is the missions. You go about getting missions very THPS4esque, aka talking to people. I didn't like that system back then and I don't like it now, luckily they aded a feature where you can just select what mission you want. That made me happy. The main that gripes me about the missions is that nearly half of them have nothing to do with skating, like one early on where you have to drive a car and it all the cones. That'd be okay if the car actually handled like a real car, but instead you have a piece of crap that apparently bounces when it hits something. I liked the gameplay in the earlier THPSs, but hate half the stuff in this so I'll give this a
5/10

''Let's make the story 'Pokemon' with skateboards!''
Story:
Not that I have anything against Pokemon or anything..
Heres the story in a nutshell: ''I wanna be the best skateboarder!''. Whee, hours of deep involving thought on that.
1/10

''Well, the skateboarding controls are fine, so lets make everything else horrible!''
Controls:
Your basic controls are the same, you know the deal 'A' Ollies, 'B' Flips.. yadayada..
But they HAD to add more stuff, like the off skate board mode, and the driving, they had more chances to screw it up, and in my honest opinion they did it horribley.
While running off skateboard you can jump, and grab on to things, like roofs. When you grab on to a roof, your skateboard magically attaches itself to your ass, helping you get up. Now that you're on the roof you can skate up there, Neversoft obviously wasn't going for realism here. -.-
Driving is what really irks me, first, no matter what car you use, you accelerate in about 2 seconds to max speed, secondly if you push brake, instead of slowing to a halt you just stop, I mean dead on stop moving, I don't believe the laws of physics would allow that.
5/10

The replay is good, if you like doing the same thing over and over again.

Final: 3/10

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 01/07/04