The Birdman’s second attempt at a story-based skating game; does it land?
What Is It? Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 (THUG2) is a 2004 release from Neversoft, another game in the wildly successful line of arcade skating games. The original Underground carried over Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4’s open-level design where you are able to select which missions to tackle by finding them within the level, it also added a story about being an upstart skater trying to get signed. THUG2 follows the same broad beats.
You are the same skater from the first game, this time finding yourself in the middle of the World Destruction Tour which pits Tony Hawk’s team against Bam Margera’s team. None of this carries any real meaning, of course, this is a Tony Hawk game and you will be spending all of your time skating around hitting goals, but there is an overarching plot here if that interests you.
I should note that the game features a separate “Classic” Mode which allows you to play the new levels in THUG2 along with seven classic levels. You get a two minute timer in this mode which is basically an exact throwback to the THPS 1-3 games. The whole plot and non-timed levels get thrown out of the window in Classic Mode.
In Story mode you will be dropped into a new level and given a handful of goals to achieve. Each of them holds a point reward for completing them and you unlock the next level by earning a certain amount of points in the current level. Repeat this over the game’s seven levels and you will see the credits.
The goals are split into four categories: yours, Pro, Guest, and Secret. During each level you will be able to find and switch to a pro skater, a special guest, and a secret character. The secret characters often ride things that aren’t skateboards and have some absolutely ridiculous jumping abilities, while the other three are skating normally.
The variety of the goals are a strong point here. Many of them take some time to understand what you need to do. I always spent a solid 10-15 minutes skating around each new level before attempting to complete any goals. The cycle forces you to learn the levels a bit before really diving in, and the game is better off for that.
Throughout, you will increase your stats by doing lots of tricks. This is a fun way to improve the character. Land a massive combo and see the little notice that your stats increased. Good gaming feedback loop.
I’ve reviewed other games in this series and they go into more detail on the mechanics of the game, they are identical here to the few prior games in the series. Grab, flip, grind, spin, revert, and manual will be your core move set and the game makes them easy to pull off but difficult to master into massive combos. If this core gameplay wasn’t great, nobody would care about these games 20+ years after their release. Rest assured that THUG2 carries over the great controls of the preceding games.
It took me somewhere in the 10-12 hour range to hit the credits in Story Mode. There were a decent amount of goals I didn’t do, and the Classic Mode is sitting right there to explore, not to mention the post-game levels and varying difficulty levels (with difficulty changing some of the challenges and the requirements to unlock the next level). All of that is to say; there’s a lot of game here if you like what you’re playing.
I can’t leave a Tony Hawk review without mentioning the soundtrack. I think the soundtrack here is very good, but not the best in the series. It goes off the rails a bit with some classic rock songs, but mostly stays in the punk/rap lane the series had been living in for a while at this point.
The Best Part: This will only apply to those who have played the original Underground, but I can’t state enough how much this game benefits from dropping a lot of the non-skating activities. You can still hop off your board in THUG2 and climb ladders and ledges, none of this controls very well or is all that fun, but at least it is toned down here. You aren’t required to do things like drive around golf carts or the other random additions THUG added. These were clear weak points in that game and seeing them mostly being dropped from THUG2 was a big reason this game landed so well with me.
The Worst Part: Not enough levels. The seven levels in story mode are low for a Tony Hawk game. Yes, they augment this through an additional seven classics in Classic mode, as well as some post-game levels, but it still feels light. Having made that complaint, I will say that the levels here are really strong. If dropping a few levels helped improve the quality of the ones they did make, I’m all for that trade-off. (And I should also note that the original THUG only had eight)
The Verdict: Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 is a great time. I still prefer the original numbered games, specifically the first three, but THUG2 redeemed the THUG series in my book as the original THUG did not land very well with me.
THUG2 succeeds by shifting the focus back to skating, applying a paper-thin “story” that provides some appropriately silly cutscenes, and centers the whole thing around some really good levels. All of this is built around the same core engine the game had been running on for a few years. All of the muscle memory built up from prior games will instantly return once you hop on a board in this one. There’s a reason the games have held up for so long, and that is mostly around the fantastic controls.
If you want more Tony Hawk in your retro gaming life, Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 will be an excellent addition to your library.
How to Play: PlayStation 2*, Xbox, GameCube, PC, GBA
*console played on for this review
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