Did not match up to the greateness of the predecessor, but a good game nevertheless.
Sadly, the awnser to that question, in my opinion, was no.
Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is basically a mash-up of the Pro Skater series, and elements of the movie, Jackass. Well, that's how I see it anyway. I'll be honest, they have introduced a few sweet things into the game, but, also, they have lost a lot of good things that the original Tony Hawk's Underground brought into the series.
New things introduced into Underground 2 include the Classic Mode. This is basically a mash-up of every game in the series, put together. Certain levels from almost every Pro Skater game put together, into a mode where you are required to nosegrind a certain object, or melon over this, or collect S-K-A-T-E, or collect C-O-M-B-O in a combo etc, in a space of two minutes, similar to the game format of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. This, is obviously a very great addition to the game.
However, the Story Mode of Underground 2, was, in my opinion, a complete letdown. Some of the goals had nothing to do with skateboarding. A lot of the goals, actually, had nothing to do with skating. The goals loosely rely on wreaking havoc across cities, and graffiti tagging with poorly constructed, or "toy" tags. Gang rivalry is settled by throwing tomatoes and spray paint at them. The plot of this game is that the player enters some sort of "World Destruction Tour", where, as the name states, skaters travel all across the world, basically causing havoc. The player travels all around the world, from America to Australia to Spain. To be honest, this game might as well have been called The World Destruction Tour. Hardly anything in story mode has anything to do with skating.
Here, I must here criticise the dullness of these maps. The maps on Underground 2 seem way too small, and everything just seems bunched up, when compared to other maps in the previous games. Some of the maps are also dull, such as Berlin and Skatopia for example. Just a bunch of quarter pipes. And also, Story Mode also has a night-time and day-time feature. The night-time feature is completely useless, it is very, very hard to complete any goals which involve graffiti tagging or racing. Also, some maps are pitch black in some areas, making it really hard to see where you are going.
Graphics are so-so for the standards of 2004. But, is it me, or does the 2003 game, Underground 1, have better graphics?
Audio is perfect. Sounds are clear and the majority of the music played is suitable for a skateboarding game.
The replay value for this game..... Ughh... I can't really see myself playing Story Mode more than three times (on each difficulty, easy, normal and sick). Classic Mode is the mode to play in if you're an old school Tony Hawk fan like me, but, even that gets boring after completing every Classic Goal more than a few times again and again.
Multiplayer is quite fun, if you have mates over, and have a bit of HORSE or Graffiti going around, I do see myself playing multiplayer with my mates in the future.
Money for value. Well, this game is backwards compatible with the X-box 360. And there are hardly any more brand new copies for this game. I purchased my game about half a year back (from the date this review was written) for only $5.00 preowned (Australian Dollar). If you do see this game with a price tag of less than $15, then get it. But, if you had the option of picking another Tony Hawk game from the Pro Skater Series or Underground 1, I suggest you get the other game instead, as all five of the predecessors have better replay value and story mode than that of Underground 2.
Hey, to be honest, the story mode aspect of the game is quite average, but only so for the first few times you're playing it. Multiplayer is excellent, I enjoyed nearly all aspects of it. This game is great, however, it was just disappointing because of the fact that it was not as good as the previous games in the series, and in story mode, the idea of skating somehow sidetracked onto graffiti tagging and racing. And that is the reason why I rate the game a semi-decent 6.5/10 score.