Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

"Not as great as everyone says but still decent"

Everyone is saying this game is like the best on playstation or of all time and stuff like that. Well, if you actually skate, chances are you will like this game for a while and then get bored with it. If you don't really know what skating is like in the first place you will love this game and ignore this review. Pretty much I agree with everything being said about how it is put together really well and stuff but the way the game is meant to be played is completely different from how you will want to play it if you skate.

Graphics: 8/10
The graphics are definetely really good for playstation. The frame rate hardly ever drops and is pretty high, and although there is some pop up it doesn't matter as much as in driving games cause you're not going as fast as a car. Oh wait a second, this is Tony Hawk, you're going faster than a car. But the pop up still doesn't really affect the game. The skaters have lots of detail on them, like logos and stuff, and the animations are really well done also well. The levels are really detailed also, although not exactly true to the actual locations. The graffiti pit (Venice) is really well done in terms of graphics. They're really good graphics but not quite top notch.

Sound 8.5/10
The sound in this game is done completely perfect. Your wheels sound different on different surfaces, when you noseslide it sounds different from a 5-0, and all sorts of extra stuff is thrown in also. The music is not quite as good. It has plenty of variety from MTV sweet kid music like Papa Roach to good underground hip hop like Styles of Beyond. Personally I would put all underground hip hop in a skating game because it fits better with skating than punk (just watch some skating videos if you don't believe me)...unless you're skating at 100 mph and doing tricks that look really sketchy. Anyway if you like one type of music, theres too like 3 or 4 songs in that genre and like 12 songs you won't like. Oh well at least they included enough music so that anyone will like SOME of it.

Controls 9/10
The controls are really tight and work perfect except that everything is late! What I mean is that in Thrasher for example, you push a flip trick button and automatically it gets done, although you have to pop enough to land it. In this game, you ollie then whatever you do is late, like its a late kickflip instead of just doing a kickflip. Besides that everything is done perfect, this is one of the best aspects of the game.

Gamplay 6/10
This is where I disagree from everyone else. The career mode is not fun after the first few times you get everything, then it's just tedious. It is really cool to be pros, and they have a pretty good selection of pros, even if they added only 3, 2 I really wanted and the third isn't too bad either (Eric Koston and Rodney Mullen are 2 of my favorite skaters, and Steve Cabalero is pretty good for how long he's been around, although Mullen has been around just as long). Designing levels is really cool thats the best feature in the game. Designing people is cool too, it's pretty easy to make someone who looks similar to you, plus you can make pros also if you know what they look like and thats cool (the most realistic pros I've made have been Marc Johnson and Rodrigo Teixera). But you can't customize tricks completely, which is something i really wanted to do. You can't pick their specials, they get picked automatically. And for anyone, you can't change all the tricks. You know how much I hate those %$#%ing no complys and bonelesses? If I'm about to pull some buttery trick, I don't want to include one of those! They're both stupid tricks. And if you actually skate, you won't want to do like 20 tricks in the same trick. The biggest tricks I want to like together are like kickflip bs tailslide bigflip out or something like flip in, flip out. Not 540 benihana nose manual nollie heelflip fs lipslide or something like that. That's not even close to real skating. And this is the biggest problem: Because you are able to pull off tons of tricks in one trick, just doing 2 or 3 feel like nothing. I got bored with the game because all the tricks i wanted to do were too simple. I don't want to grind for a mile, I don't want to do 10 flip tricks, 4 grinds, and 7 grabs in the same trick. I just want to be able to do somewhat realistic tricks I can't do when I skate in real life. This hurts the replay value a lot, which is what everyone says is the best part of this game.

Overall 7/10
Well if you skate you should check this game out. If you don't skate, buy it immediately and forget everything I said in the gameplay section. It definetely is fun but it just loses it's appeal fast since realistic tricks are too easy. If you want a more realistic skating game get thrasher its a lot better in that way. Even with all the faults this game is still worth checking out.

Rent/Buy
Like I said before, if you don't skate and don't know much about it buy this immediately, and if you do skate you might like it but you should still rent it first to see if you like the physics of the game and stuff.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/22/00, Updated 11/22/00