3.5/5 ★ – KHFanXIII's review of Tony Hawk's Underground.

You know, something I've learned when going through these games is that Pro Skater 3 really was the peak of the series. Growing up, Underground was one of my favorite games. I played it constantly, and managed to beat it a few times (me being a smol child, I sucked at games), and the thought that you couldn't even get off your board in previous games was enough to make me want to stay away from them at the time. But now? Having experienced every game in the series up to this point? It's okay. This newer, mission-based style I think is just not quite as well fleshed out (at least as of where I am now), and it feels somewhat lacking. I guess I should address some of my issues with the game after my most recent playthrough. Firstly, the game is very short. I don't mind shorter games, but there was just a bit of whiplash going from a game as big as THPS4 to this one. Difficulty was something I took a bit of issue with as well. I played on Normal and I'm kicking myself in the foot because it was incredibly easy. Now, I do think some of the older THPS games were *too* hard, but this felt like the pendulum swung too far in the other direction. This being my first Tony Hawk game, no wonder I had such a hard time with the previous ones. The difficulty of those games really improved my ability at these games, and coming to this one with all of that knowledge and skill, I felt like it was wasted. Another thing I had a bit of a problem with was the missions. There are *WAY* too many scavenger hunt type missions. Just going around the level trying to find specific items. Now, I get the purpose of these. You want to familiarize the player with the level and these types of missions are a good way to do it, but holy crap not only did I not "need" to be familiarized (especially since you can just start missions from the pause screen, but there are no timers so there's no real need to be super familiar with the levels), but only a couple of these types of missions would suffice. There were so many of these in the game it began to feel really repetitive. Also, I take issue with the number of missions that have you purposely NOT on a skateboard. You'll be driving racecars, leaf blowers, limos, etc. and while there are definitely more missions in which you are allowed to skate, I was upset at how many times you were forced off of your board and into another vehicle. You can definitely tell Neversoft were kind of getting bored with this series, and just wanted to do something new just for the sake of it. And again, there is the issue of, of course, the levels in the game aren't as good as the original trilogy, feeling more "realistic" and less like fun designed levels to skate in. You can pull off some really cool lines in these levels, but they just don't have that same sort of luster as the levels from past games. To switch gears to the good points of this game, the major one is the story. For the first time ever, a Tony Hawk game has a story mode, and it's actually quite excellent. It's your classic underdog, rises through the ranks, type of story, but it honestly is very engaging and I still to this day think it's the best one to come out of the series (from the games I've played). This really feels like they put effort in and it shows. Kudos to whoever played Eric Sparrow because they did a spectacular job. I'd also like to praise the addition of the ability to get off your board. While the things you can do while walking around are kind of limited, the whole mechanic of Cavemans, the Combo Run Out Timer, and just being able to not constantly be going forward (something that was super necessary if they were going to pursue the mission-based structure they did), is awesome. It (along with the Acid Drop, Hip Transfers, the Spacewalk Manual move, and Wallplants which were added in this game) really does feel like a great addition to your moveset, and further prevents situations where you feel stuck and unable to really get out of a situation. Overall, I do like the game (more-so than THPS4), but I do feel like it didn't quite reach the heights of THPS3, and from what I know of the next game, I'm not expecting that height to be achieved.