Tony Hawk's Underground 2 First Look

By Brad Shoemaker, GameSpotPosted Jul 20, 2004 9:02 am PT

From graffiti tags to Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Hawk is getting some big upgrades this year.

It takes some real chops to take the same proven gameplay formula and make it playable and fun again, year after year. Fortunately, the fine-feathered folks at Neversoft, creators of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, have been up to the task of delivering a great new version of the seminal skateboarding game repeatedly for the last few years now. Will they be able to do the same thing with the upcoming Tony Hawk's Underground 2? According to a brief demo we had recently with the game (and a consultation with our magic eight ball), signs are pointing squarely to "yes."

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 features environments with a lot more interactivity than in the last game.

The original Underground's big innovation was its new story mode, and Underground 2 will pick right up where the first game left off with a new tale of love and loss...or at least a story of more skateboarding. You'll again be playing the rookie who you took to pro status the first time around, although in the grand scheme of things--that is, next to Tony Hawk himself--you're still pretty small time. Through a bizarre series of events, you'll get pulled into a skating tournament of sorts called the "World Destruction Tour," being spearheaded by Hawk and that old jackass Bam Margera. Each character will lead a team of pro skaters. You'll start out in the story mode skating for Mr. Hawk as you travel to various hot spots and inflict your deck on the hapless populace.

THUG2's levels are similar to those you've seen in past games, but Neversoft is doing a lot to refine and streamline things to make the game flow more smoothly. We got an extensive look at the first level, set in Boston, and noted that there seems to be a lot more to do in the new game. As in Underground, you'll skate around the world with your player-created character, looking for tasks to complete to increase your skills and notoriety. This time, though, you'll also be able to switch to pro members of your team, such as Bob Burnquist and Mike Vallely, whenever you find them in the level. These skaters have their own goals, and of course their own moves, some of which overlap with your own.

Each level will even contain novelty skaters that you can take control of once you've met them, and these skaters will again have their own special tricks and moves as well as their own tasks you'll have to complete. For instance, in the Boston level, we were shown how the player can switch off to control Benjamin Franklin, who's a pretty good skater for a guy who has been dead for over 200 years now. Anyway, ol' Ben comes complete with his own special move, the Franklin Grind, which sees him whipping out a stars-and-stripes kite that gets struck by lightning when he grinds. There will be plenty of other such novelty characters in the game that you can control for a little extra variety and humor.

Painting the environment with your customized tag is just one of the new things you'll be able to do in THUG2.

Neversoft wants the levels in THUG2 to be more lifelike overall, so it has eliminated the hovering icons that signified the goals and tasks you had to complete in the previous game. Instead, you'll have to identify your mission objectives from context--for instance, we saw a bench that the player needed to grind on in the Boston level begin to flash when the player approached it. You'll have a list of goals that you can check at any time, and each one will provide a small picture as a clue of where you need to go to find that goal.

Levels in THUG2 will also be more interactive this time around. Lots of smaller elements in the environment will be breakable or otherwise rigged so you can mess with them. For instance, doing a spin move on top of a fire hydrant makes water shoot up like a geyser. Each level will also have one major element that will open up a big new area. In the Boston area, we saw how the player could light his deck on fire (by skating through an open flame) and then grind on two old cannons that just happened to contain live ammo. These cannons fired, bringing down part of a partially constructed building and opening it up so we could skate around inside of it.

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 16, 2006 1:33 am PT

looks good
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