2/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Tony Hawk's Underground 2.

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is a game I had some mixed feelings about going in. I knew that it was a much different game than the original THUG and, as I do have a pretty nice feeling of fondness for that game, hearing its direct sequel was so different left me feeling hesitant. So, does the game assuage my fears and come out on top? Well, no not even close. Despite THUG1 having some issues, and the levels not being quite as good as the first couple games' levels, it was still a really great experience and the effort they put into the story was really admirable and they crafted a really compelling narrative. THUG2 is what you get if you take all of THUG1's worst aspects and jacks them up to 11 AND THEN it takes the first game's greatest aspect (the story) and instead ditches it for a shitty Jackass-styled romp through the world. Too many scavenger hunt style missions in the first game? HA this game is packed with them AND they are much harder, having you spend tons of time wandering around looking for the items. Too many off-of-skateboard segments? PREPOSTEROUS the second game includes more with a set of goals for EACH of them. They also overhauled how goals work, making them act more like classic THPS goals HOWEVER, making them in these big open-esque levels. This gives the game the exact problem I had with THPS4, except making it worse as at least you could see where all the missions were in that game, as it was always someone who gave you a mission. In this one, the goals just kind of exist somewhere in the level, not as a mission you activate, but more like they are all in pre-activated state and you have to find and complete them. This is very tedious as you have to constantly be checking your goal menu and trying to use the few pictures they provide to try and figure out what they want you to do and where it is. Which creates a two-pronged problem. Firstly, due to how they changed the goals, you can no longer quickly retry most goals. Since they just all kind of exist, you will have to repeatedly backtrack to the start of a goal every time you make a mistake. This is INCREDIBLY tedious ESPECIALLY considering we had MULTIPLE games where quick retries were a standard and not having that for most of the goals in the game really slows down the experience, making it a lot less snappy-feeling. The second issue is something I briefly touched on in that you have to search the level for these goals yourself. This wouldn't be an issue if they kept something from THUG1. In that game, they allowed you to quickly teleport to any goal in the menu of the game. It's a little cheap in that game as they are clearly visible on the screen if you look around, but GOD it feels like that feature was made for this game. Having it in the last one but not this one feels like another step back. The only thing the second game did improve on was the length (and to an extent the difficulty) but probably ONLY due to the time I spent looking for things in levels, the lack of quick retries, and the changes to the goal structure. The "story" if you can even call it that consists of you just doing random shit across the world, destroying a bunch of objects, buildings and the like, tied thinly together by cutscenes that usually just consist of Bam Margera doing some crazy, wacky thing to show you "ha ha, look it's the funny." I've never seen Jackass, but I assume the appeal of those films is all the crazy shit these REAL people ACTUALLY do. Taking the reality out of this, it just comes across as mid-2000s edgy internet humor and it really doesn't hit the mark at all. The new additions to this gameplay, don't even really feel necessary or helpful to keeping your flow of combos going. You have the Freak-Out move, which has you mashing the grind button after bailing, filling up a meter, and showing an animation of you "freaking out" (getting more severe, depending on how much the meter was filled). Doing this will allow you to start off with a base score after bailing. EXCEPT, this is almost always useless as all it really does is delay you from getting up and skating, time which could be used to get a higher score than a Freak-Out even allows for. Another major addition is Graffiti and...why? I was never into skateboarding culture, but graffiti artists seem to have no connection outside of the "counter-culture" thing. It seems like a super odd addition and, as it scores you no points, requires you to get off your board, and completely stops you in your tracks while doing so, is incredibly useless outside of the few times in the game which require it. The one major exception to this is the addition of the Focus move. When your Special meter has been filled and you've become special, you can activate Focus Mode. This mode slows down time, making pulling off complex moves, or keeping your balance meter balanced incredibly easy. Due to how easy it makes it, I'm completely of the opinion that it should have never been implemented as it completely destroys the difficulty of the game. Now, the one shining, incredible addition they made to this game was Classic Mode. Classic Mode is a separate mode from the main campaign which has you play through levels THPS1-3 style: here's a list of goals, you have 2 minutes, do what you can in this run. Honestly it's the best part of this game ESPECIALLY as it includes remade (or straight recreations of) maps from past Pro Skater games. This just makes the Classic Mode a joy to go through as a large chunk of it is. I will say as another minor bit of praise that I do think the levels in this game are better than those in the first THUG and are way more fun to skate around in, with a lot of cool set pieces. Other than those though (and the obvious fact that the core controls are still incredibly solid), this game is just not very good. If I ever come back to this for another playthrough, I'm sticking to Classic Mode as that is the only saving grace for this game.