Hello everybody! Hope you're all having a great Tuesday wherever you may be. Today I will be doing my third review on Tony Hawk's Underground.




The game:
Tony Hawk’s Underground or THUG is a skating-adventure game that was released in 2003 for the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and Gameboy Advance. It was created by Neversoft, a developer under Activision and this game was the 5th installment in the Tony Hawk series. This was also the first Tony Hawk game to not have the words “Pro Skater” in its title like the previous 4 games. This was the game that Neversoft decided to do things differently for the series gameplay wise and single-player wise.

The Story:

This was the first Tony Hawk game to have a story included in its single-player. Instead of picking a pro and doing goals per level like in the previous games, you create your own character and you go through a story that takes you all over the world in becoming a world-famous professional skateboarder. For the first game to have a story, I thought it was pretty neatly done and it was cool how they approached this game differently than the previous games. They did a good job changing things up while still keeping the core-nature of a Tony Hawk game. You will feel attached to your character and you’ll hate some people you meet on the way, especially Eric Sparrow. He’s easily the biggest douche in video game history and that is a fact.

I thought it was cool how you can either play as a guy or girl for the story mode but when you play through it you can tell that they didn’t adjust the dialogue for the gender you’re playing as. NPCs will still call you “bro” or “dude” or “man” if you’re playing as a girl, also the guy and girl have the same lines of dialogue throughout the whole game. I wished this was different so you can get 2 separate experiences while playing the story mode based on the gender of your character but sadly that is not there. However you are free to customize your character in any way you want. The customization options this game features for creating a character is ridiculous. There are tons of different ways to customize your player from clothes, shoes, hair, body height, body weight, and so much more. This game has face-mapping technology so you can take a picture of your face and put it on the character.

To progress through the story, you have to complete Goals by talking to NPCs. They will tell you to do just about anything from getting a certain amount of points in a limited time, collecting items, do a set of tricks, or get access to certain areas. Some of these Goals can be fun to do but sometimes you’ll be telling yourself “Do I really have to do this?” These Goals will differ from difficulty. If you fail a Goal you can always restart it. You press pause then go to “Retry Last Goal” and you will immediately start that goal again. Keep in mind that you don’t have to do every Goal in a level but there will be some Goals that you will have to do without a choice.

Graphics:

The graphics are pretty good and improves a lot from the previous game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. Player textures are better, level textures are more polished and pretty to look at, level backgrounds have better textures, and NPCs look better than ever before. Its not the best looking PS2/Xbox/Gamecube game but it still looks good.

Gameplay:

- This is the first Tony Hawk game that allows the player to get off their board. At any time while skating you can get off your board and run around on foot. This allows the players to get to certain areas faster and easier than skating to them. While on foot your character can jump, double jump, climb ladders, grab ledges, and shimmy on ledges. It’s done well in this game and there will be times when you have to get off your board in order to do certain things. You can even link skating combos while on foot but you need to do it quickly or else you’ll lose it.

- The camera angle in the Tony Hawk games is done exceptionally well and this game doesn’t disappoint. The camera will angle up perfectly to any jump, grind, or manual you are doing. You will have little to no problems at all fighting with the camera.

- Neversoft added tons of new tricks in this game while altering the ones already there. For example, some tricks that were Special Tricks in previous games are now regular tricks. My favorite addition they added were the Manual tricks. You can do Handstand, Pogo, Truckstand, Casper, Anti-Casper and my personal favorite, Spacewalk. All of these were Special Tricks in the previous games but now every character can do them which is nice. You can also change the tricks that every character can do. If you want to give a special manual trick or add/remove tricks to Tony Hawk or Bam Margera you can do that.

- The levels in this game are massive and there is a great variety in them to choose from. There are 9 levels you can play on, varying from New Jersey to Hawaii to a KISS concert in Australia. They really pushed the console’s limit while making these levels. Each level provides just about anything you can grind, jump, or ramp off of. My personal favorite in this game is Manhattan because its huge and there’s just so much areas to skate around in.

- At some points in the game you will get to drive a vehicle of some sort. The driving in this game is terrible and thank god it isn’t all that important to do either. You can’t do tricks or get points while driving a vehicle so there really isn’t any point in driving them.

- Acid Drop, Wallplant, Caveman, and Hip Transfer were added in this game to help players link combos or gain more speed. Acid Drop is used to dive straight into a ramp from a high position to gain speed, Wallplant is used to bounce off of a wall so you can continue a combo, Caveman is used on foot to jump back on your skateboard, and Hip Transfer is jumping from ramp-to-ramp at certain angles. These can be performed by every skater in the game and they help out a ton to rack up points and chain ridiculous combos.

- This game has 4 difficulties. Too Easy, Easy, Normal, and Sick are the names of the difficulty modes. I play on Sick and it makes the game more challenging and fun.

- The max players you can play split-screen with is 4. There are a lot of different game modes to play. One new gamemode is called Fireball Fight. Everytime you do a kickflip, your character shoots out a fireball. This game mode had provided many laughs over the years because of how funny it looks when a huge fireball comes flying out of your guy. The classic modes like Trick Attack, Graffiti, HORSE, CTF, and King of the Hill are all still there.


Extra Content:

This game offers TONS of extra and hidden content. It offers these modes: Create a Skater, Create a Park, Create a Goal, Create a Trick, and Create a Deck.
- Create a Skater lets you create your own custom skater.
- Create a Park lets you create the skatepark of your dreams with easily and flexible tools so anybody can create things. I like to compare this mode with Halo’s Forge mode because they are almost exactly the same thing.
- Create a Goal lets you create your own custom made Goals and integrate them into the game levels. With this you can even make your own Story Mode if you wanted to. You type what the NPCs say to you before you make the goal.
- Create a Trick lets you create that awesome trick you always wanted or alter tricks already made. You can make how fast you move in a trick, do all kinds of flips/rotations, and how much points its worth.
- Create a Deck lets you make your own skateboard with your own colors, stickers etc. and you can use that board whenever you’d like.

There is also a lot of hidden skaters to unlock. My favorites are Iron Man and Gene Simmons from KISS. You get Iron Man for beating the game on Easy and Gene Simmons for beating the game on Sick. They both get their own special tricks to do and they’re awesome.

In the Options menu, you can change the color of the menus in the game as well as the player’s HUD. If you want everything red, you can do that. I thought this was pretty cool because not that many games let you customize the menus or HUD.

There are 2 types of hidden objects to find in this game. There’s Tapes and then there is Maps.
If you find the Tapes, you unlock cutscenes of real life skateboarders failing hard and other types of developer-made videos. The Maps are floating pictures of iconic levels from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Those levels are Venice, School II, and Hangar. Once you collect those pictures those maps are playable. They have been upgraded graphic wise thanks to the PS2’s improved engine over the PS1s/N64s.

In the Hotter than Hell level(It’s a big KISS concert in Australia) there are the letters K, I, S, and S. If you jump up and touch all of those letters, it turns to night and the band comes out and performs some songs before going away. Doing this also unlocks a video of a KISS concert that you can watch in the Options menu.

This game has cheat codes. Some examples are Perfect Manual, Moon Gravity(personal favorite), Perfect Rail, and Always Special. You can toggles these on/off at any time.

Soundtrack:
The soundtrack is this game is awesome. Chad Muska did a great job at getting all of these songs in the game. The soundtrack offers so much variety in music its insane. Go ahead and give it a listen, this soundtrack is so good and it helped influence my taste in music when I was younger. You got everything here from punk to classic rock to hip-hop. There’s around 70+ songs here to listen to and they're all worth it.

There's nearly 4 hours of good music here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3


Final Verdict:
Tony Hawk’s Underground is the ultimate skateboarding game with so much to do in it. This game has enough content to last you for a long time. To this day this is my all-time favorite Tony Hawk game because its just done so well and its still enjoyable to play. This is arguably the best Tony Hawk game in the series with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 as the 2nd best. As for the Underground games, this was always the one I came back to. Underground 2 was okay, but it doesn't have that same feel to it as this one does.

Tony Hawk’s Underground easily gets a 9/10 for being a great game with little faults in it. If you were a PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube owner and this game wasn’t part of your library, you have serious issues as you truly missed out on a spectacular game.

I love love love LOVVVVEEED this game!

It really is amazing. Every once in a while I'll bring out my PS2 and play it for a couple hours.

I spent waaaaaaay too many hours playing THPS games trying to get good. Mostly in THAW trying to hit a legit billion point combo (which I did eventually), but THUG is still my favorite.


There's still a pretty active niche community of players. Mostly on THUG Pro.

I played Underground 2. Never got to play this one.
But I see the similarities in the 2 games, and it seems Underground 2 had improved versions of mechanics first introduced in this game.

I like that those games didn't JUST involve Skateboarding, they had more to them than that.
Great review!

I played Underground 2. Never got to play this one.
it seems Underground 2 had improved versions of mechanics first introduced in this game.

I have to disagree entirely tbh.

Quote from: DemonicChronic on January 28, 2015, 09:56:54 AM

Quote from: Val 'Ketam on January 28, 2015, 01:41:09 AM

I played Underground 2. Never got to play this one.
it seems Underground 2 had improved versions of mechanics first introduced in this game.

I have to disagree entirely tbh.

I also disagree.

THUG 2's core mechanics were essentially the same as THUG 1's. The game was still fun, but it just lacked that feel THUG 1 had.

In THUG 2 the maps were smaller, the game was easier, and the game overall was more cartoonish and silly where THUG 1 was more realistic and believable.

So THUG 1 > THUG 2?

I also disagree.

THUG 2's core mechanics were essentially the same as THUG 1's. The game was still fun, but it just lacked that feel THUG 1 had.

In THUG 2 the maps were smaller, the game was easier, and the game overall was more cartoonish and silly where THUG 1 was more realistic and believable.

THUG 1's physics were more unrealistic actually. The game itself had a more realistic atmosphere but when it came down to what you could actually do while comboing. . .

The main reason I prefer THUG 1 aside from the obvious, "the story was much better" is the fact that it has drift which allows you to move around much more freely in the air when you get off your board and caveman. That feature opens up a whole mess of possibilities when playing the game. I also prefer the level design of THUG over THUG 2 as they all flow much better.

Overall THUG 2 just feels like a more limiting version of THUG to me. Of course, THUG Pro is top dog because it combines the best of both of them and THPS4 but that's not an official game so. . .