Tony Hawk's Underground

"A classic skating game, again at it's highest"

I have played most of the Tony Hawk games and have gotten very good over the past 5 years. I think it was a good thing that they tried out making a story mode. As soon as I got this game for Christmas, I started playing and I could not put my controller down.

Game play – 9/10

It is basically the same as the other Tony Hawk games, except with the addition of a few things. You can now Caveman to help bring together combos for more points. They add the acid drop and hip transfers.

With the addition of being able to drive, don’t think it will be like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, because it isn’t. Besides a couple of missions, there is really no point of driving.

OMG! You can get off your skateboard and climb things! Not that exciting, but now you can explore more stuff and you can FINALLY go up stairs without having to find a path around with your skateboard.

Story – 9.5/10

I am glad that Neversoft decided to try the story mode. In Tony Hawk 2 you would have to try to get as many objectives done in 2 minutes. That got kind of annoying going back to start, waiting for it to load. 2 MINUTES ALREADY?! I HARDLY DID ANYTHING!
Although they stopped the 2 minutes after THPS2, now all the places you go, are actual places unlike THPS3 and THPS4.

Anyway...
You can choose what your character looks like, change the deck, choose your sponsors and go from, “Custom Skater? Never heard of ya.” To, “OMG! It’s Custom Skater!”
They give you 4 different difficulties. The easiest difficulty for those who this is their very first time playing a Tony Hawk game, and the Sick difficulty for those who think that they rule over all other Tony Hawk players.

Instead of having to find the little stat level up icons or use money to buy your stats, now you must complete certain tasks in order to level-up in your stat (ex. Grind for 15 seconds: Grind +1). The harder the difficulty, the harder the tasks.

This isn’t that bad, but story mode does go kind of quick. However, that means unlocking new characters for Multiplayer mode quicker. And we all know that Tony Hawk multiplayer is awesome.

Music – 9/10

Like most of the other Tony Hawk games, you will hear a lot of these songs over and over again. Although they are pretty good songs, after a while, they will just get stuck in your head and hard to get out.

Controls 9.5/10

The controls in Tony Hawk games are usually very good and they still are in this game. Good maneuverability throughout all of game play. The only thing that you could possibly complain about is when you are running on foot. When you jump while running, it is a little hard to stay in control while in the air and you might have pushed the button to grab onto that one building but you will go right through the edge.

Graphics - 10/10

Obviously, over time, graphics get better and better and better. The graphics are not that much different from THPS4. I think that the blood actually looks like blood though in this game. With a few new unlockable things, for example, the flame that appears when grinding, it doesn’t exactly look life-like, but it looks pretty good. Again I say, not that much of an improvement though, because they don’t need to improve it. I don’t think that we need Resident Evil graphics for Tony Hawk. Although that would be kind of cool.

Sound – 10/10

Ahhhhh… The joys of hearing your character scream in pain, and blood going all over the place. Although it might not be very tempting to hear or watch, they make it really sound like a bone has been broken. The new sound after completing a mission is cool, and who can forget the classic wheels rolling along the pavement sound. The sounds are still pretty original but they have progressively gotten better.

Multiplayer – 10/10

Multiplayer mode in Tony Hawk has always been fun to play with your friends. The games in THUG are Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Combo Mambo, Slap!, King of the Hill, Graffiti, the all new Firefight (you shoot fireballs out of your skateboard at your opponent), Goal Attack (online only), Capture the Flag (also online only), Horse (2-player only), and free skate.

Overall – 9.5/10

First of all, I would love to put 9.5 as the actual rating but this thing won't let me do that. Anyways, this is possibly the best Tony Hawk game Neversoft made. It has just about everything that you could want in a Tony Hawk game. Although its replay value is not that good, you do get stuff for completing it twice.

Rent or Buy?

Buy! Don’t think that it will be as bad as THPS4. Because this game is not bad at all! There is so much more additions to this game that you can’t try them all if you rent the game. Plus, multiplayer can be very addicting because of the fun and challenge to some games.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/15/04