by Brian - December 9, 2003

Ever since its premiere on the Playstation, the Tony Hawk series has been dubbed a classic. Combining superb gameplay, silky-smooth graphics, and a variety of skateboarding themed songs from various genres made it a smash hit with more than just skaters. Now with the fifth installment of the series finally here, will it live up to the previous installments? No doubt.

Gameplay

If you are familiar with the Tony Hawk series, you already know what the game consists of. The only thing that is significantly different is the Story mode. What makes the story mode different in Tony Hawk Underground (T.H.U.G.) is that now there actually is a story. In Story mode you create your own skater, starting out as a punk kid from New Jersey and making your way to becoming an amateur and eventually you will turn pro through 27 chapters. During each chapter you must complete several goals ranging from collecting items, scoring high point combos, and even car chases. While most of them are at least somewhat important to the story, quite a few of them seem like busy work. Luckily you don�t have to do them all to progress, unless you choose the hardest difficulty (I played through it on Normal), so if you can�t beat a challenge or two, don�t sweat it. Just do the easy ones. One thing that really bothered me about story mode though, is the car physics. They are quite literally the worst physics I have seen in a game� ever. Still, its not a car game, but that is very annoying.

Aside from Story mode, other options such as Free Skate, and multiplayer are the only other modes of play. Not that that�s a bad thing. Free Skate makes the game easy to just pick up and play whenever you are bored. Furthermore it is a great way to practice your tricks and combos. The shear amount of tricks and styles of tricks you can do in the game make practicing fun, which is more than you can say for most games with a practice mode. Other than that, there isn�t much to Free Skate.

As far as Multiplayer goes, there are nine modes. First of all, there is trick attack. It pretty much is your standard �Who can score the most points� mode. Second is Score Challenge. It is similar to the previous mode; only it is sort of reversed. Basically, who ever can get a certain score first wins. Next is Combo Mambo. Whoever scores the biggest combo in the time limit wins. This is great fun for Tony Hawk vets. After that there is Slap, which is kind of dumb. Whoever runs into the other the most and knocks the opponent down wins. King of the Hill is kind of like kill the carrier. Whoever has the crown the longest wins. My favorite modes are next. Graffiti, Firefight, and Horse. Horse is just like it is in Basketball, where the game originated. You have to keep pulling difficult tricks and combos until one person spells Horse. You get a letter each time you can�t complete the trick. Graffiti is my personal favorite. You go head to head against an opponent and trick off every object in site. When you trick on an object, it turns your color. Person with the most objects tricked off of at the end wins. Fireball is a new mode that is also pretty fun. By pulling a trick (Up and B or Down and B) you shoot a fireball straight out in front of you. The point is to know your opponent down by doing this as many times as possible. It is surprisingly fun. Lastly, there is free skate, which is exactly like single player free skate, but with two players. Overall, the multiplayer is solid because of the wide variety of games to play.

Graphics

The Tony Hawk series has always had good graphics, and T.H.U.G. is no different. The character models and textures were both very well done. Furthermore, the animation and cut-scenes are silky smooth, which just adds to the excellence of the game. However, the graphics are not perfect. For example, there appears to be nothing in the way of lighting, which was a disappointment. Other than that though, the graphics in T.H.U.G. are quite adequate.

Sound and Music

One thing that has always stood out to me in the series was the music. Unlike most games, which usually have techno music of some sort, Tony Hawk always has a wide variety of bands and rappers on their soundtracks. This version�s soundtrack consists of dozens of artists ranging from Kiss, to Nas, including many lesser-known artists as well. And even though most of it is not my type of music, some of it left me hearing it in my head hours after I had shut off the game.

Other than that, the voice acting in the cut-scenes was definitely surprising. I had expected it to be piss-poor, but it is actually damn good. So that�s good. Also, as usual the sound effects are realistic. Nothing to really complain about here.

Funfactor

Again, there isn�t really anything to complain about in this section. The game is extremely fun. What else can I say? Whether you are playing by yourself to kill some time, or playing with some friends in multiplayer, its damn fun. There is nothing like pulling a 40,000-point combo at the end of a round to beat your friend by a couple hundred points. Ok, maybe there is, but still, its fun!

Everything Else

There is quite a bit more to the game than all that was mentioned above. First of all there is the Create a Skate Park feature. It allows you to create your own park chock full of whatever the hell you want whether its tall buildings to trick off of, rails to grind on, ramps to fly over, plus a bunch of other stuff. Unfortunately, there aren�t many new items to place in your parks from previous versions, and the major flaw with the Create a Park system is the limit on how much editing you can do. I believe it has to do with file size, and it limits you to having to make small, somewhat crappy parks as opposed to what I wanted to do, a big, extremely awesome park. That really drags it down.

Although not a new feature, the create a skater feature is back again. There are dozens of new ways to customize your character now, and tons of clothing options to choose from. I was thoroughly pleased with it.

Furthermore, a new feature, Create a Trick, was a pleasant surprise. New to the series, it allows you to combine parts of other tricks to create your own specials. It�s really cool to create your own tricks and see how they look when preformed. Another great addition to the series.

Final Thoughts

Tony Hawk�s Underground is easily the best iteration of the series to date. If you enjoyed any of the previous versions, you owe it to yourself to go pick this one up. Hell, even if you have never played a Tony Hawk game, at least go rent it. You will not be disappointed.