Once the "look we made this game!" movies finished playing I selected Story Mode and hoped for the best. The game starts you off creating... yourself, basically. There’s a veritable mountain of options available for creating a skater. Everything from the color of every piece of whatchamacallit, to the size of your chin. My only irk is that you can’t really customize the t-shirts the way I wish you could. Being able to paint a t-shirt a la Jet Grind Radio Future would be really cool. Oh well, maybe next year. Overall the create-a-player is very intuitive and deep. In no time I had a likely representation of my red headed self... a couple pounds lighter though.

After a short introduction to your best bud Eric, and the neighborhood the game drops you unceremoniously on your board. There isn’t really any kind of tutorial to be seen. But the controls come naturally and the button layout makes perfect sense. Without even popping open the manual I was able to deduce that the people with the giant red stars above their heads were people to talk to. Somewhat like an RPG they’ll give you quests: hit a COMBO line, find the SKATE letters, do this trick, find this person/item, get this many points in X amount of time. I wouldn’t really call Tony Hawk an action game per say, because it often felt like a puzzle game. Often you have to figure out how to do what someone’s asked you to do. However, much to my annoyance throughout the game people would ask you to do tricks but not tell you how to do them. Thankfully it seems that on lower difficulty levels you don’t have to do all the ‘quest’ items to trigger the next part of the story. So if something is stumping you, there’s usually something else that can be done instead.

The subtle RPG aspects of the game really come across once I realized I could dismount my skateboard and explore the level at a slower pace. I say slower pace because THUG feels way too fast. Often I’d end zipping by something I wanted to grind or jump, and end up behind a dumpster bouncing back and forth. When I saw that my speed stat had been increased I cringed. I asked around and many who were not Tony Hawk veterans agreed the game was moving fast. One of them told me I shouldn’t use cheat codes. "No," I told him. "This is the default speed."

Getting off the skateboard is the big new feature for THUG and it shows. Where the controls are smooth as a baby’s buttered butt when you’re on a board, they’re stiff and robotic when you’re off. Jumping and grabbing onto ledges feels sporadic, glitchy and hard to line up sometimes. The ability to walk and not fall off ledges ala Laura Croft would be great. Maybe next year’s THUG2 will offer that up. Finally, as cool as it is to get off the board and run over to another spot and continue the same combo... the XBox version maps this to the white and black buttons. Not cool. There really aren’t any other buttons that could have been used, but still it’s a little awkward.

Towards the end of the first level I had my first chance to drive a car. The much touted new feature in THUG. I couldn’t help but wonder why. The cars handle like bricks on ice, if even that well. Cars also clip through objects like mad, and the physics that make players on skateboards move like swans; feel like drunken ballerinas when applied to the cars. I can’t understand why such a rough feature was made into a selling point. I’ve read that you should view them as a cool extra. I don’t see a cool extra. I see crap.

The game keeps things pretty simple for new players, only introducing new modes as you progress through the story. For example the skateshop isn’t opened up until you’ve gotten yourself sponsored by a local skateshop. The create-a-trick and create-a-deck open up later on once you’ve gotten further into the story as well. Both modes add a lot to the replay value of the game. However, where the create-a-player and create-a-deck are intuitive enough to get away with not having a tutorial mode... the create-a-trick mode really could have used a tutorial. It appeared while I was in the middle of the air performing a quest item in the "do this trick" category. It does become easier to understand once you’ve played around with a little bit, and it’s smart enough to know if the trick you’ve created is impossible to land. So while it may be a little difficult to use, it’s pretty stupid proof.

Speaking of stupid proof the game has several selectable difficulty modes, and lo and behold they actually are what they say they are. Too Easy is actually too easy! I first started playing the game in this setting thinking that as a newbie it was for me... but found that I couldn’t fall off my board at all. Even nose diving into the ground wouldn’t dislodge me from my board. So off to Beginner mode I went. The quest items don’t really change from difficulty to difficulty, but the requirements and or time allotted does. This makes the game pretty friendly to players of all skill levels.

However, as I played through the game I couldn’t help but notice the same quest items repeated themselves in every level. Literally each level had one of each of the five: hit a combo line, find the SKATE letters, do this trick, find this person/item, get this many points in X amount of time. Sometimes it was pretty cool trying to land a certain trick off a certain object, as when I was in San Diego trying to hop a huge set of stairs and pull a triple kick flip. But far too often I had to hunt around for some item and do a trick right in front of it, or trick to hit it, or just find it in a certain amount of time. Many times I’d fail this type of quest item a good three or four times before I’d memorized the location of all the people, items or whatchamacallits. The lack of variety really pulls down the fun factor. I find it very odd because the first level has this great little challenge where you have to sneak by a horde of drug zombie thugs... and then the rest of the game has nothing this creative.

Those zombie drug guys looked pretty good for a game that has been built around the power of the PS2. Overall the graphics are pretty clean and the texture work holds up on the XBox. However, there aren’t really any special effects going on. Certainly no bump mapping. There are also a lot of weird little glitches, like when you’re driving a car there’s no shadow underneath you. This only goes to increase the brick on ice feeling cars give you. Oddly, I’ve heard nothing but how big the levels are... and I didn’t find them to be all that big. When I heard there were cars in THUG I thought maybe this was because you had to drive across town to hit a spot for some tricks. Nope. The levels may be big, but in terms of scale they’re no Vice City. However, there is a lot of background activity going on. Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many skateboarders in one area before. Regular pedestrians seem to be in short supply.

It took me a while to notice, but the bottom of my board showed scars from my constant grinding. Oddly, doing a dark side grind didn’t affect the top of the board in the same way. Nor did my constant bailing cause my avatar to become torn up. Cut scenes while not Metal Gear Solid in caliber get the job done. Finally, HDTV owners will appreciate 720p support. It’s not jaw dropping, but certainly jaw numbing.

If you’re worried that your jaw won’t drop enough, feel free to let your ears be dropped. The music selection is horrible. It seems like every other song is rap, and there aren’t many songs to be heard. For a game that’s supposed to be "underground" there isn’t a lot of indie love. Further hampering your fun is the lack of music management while playing. You also can’t decide what songs to play, just which soundtracks to use. Thankfully, you can use music burnt to your XBox hard drive... though on my 5.1 surround sound I found it a tad muffled. Custom soundtracks seem to playback like they’re live versions. It’s an odd effect, but not one that ruins your experience.

Beyond the music, all the sound effects are just fine. Running your skateboard across different surfaces results in different sounds. Although running across a different surface while on foot doesn’t. Running through a fountain doesn’t result in any splashing either. And while the game supports surround sound, it doesn’t do anything spectacular with it. Reverb and spatial effects don’t really come across in the same way they do in other titles. Thankfully, for a game that has a lot of story going on the voice acting is just fine.

There’s no LIVE support. Although the game does support system link, but this is a little hard to get going when everyone wants to play Halo or Rainbow Six 3. PS2 gamers get to trade faces, levels and tricks using the network adaptor... I can’t say how much fun this is... but I can imagine it’s pretty cool. The create-a-level editor is very powerful, and the included examples go a long way towards giving you ideas. The drag-a-rail tool is simply mesmerizing as well. I spent an hour playing with the physics trying to create a miniature rollercoaster for my red haired skateboarder. Further adventures with cars could prove equally as exciting.

When all is said and done, THUG is an amazingly deep and replay value heavy title. I can see why the game has consistently gotten scores in the 9’s. It’s a good game, and while I can’t speak for long time fans I can say that anyone who’s been looking longingly at Tony Hawk is pretty safe getting into the series now. The game play is solid and fun, but I’m not sure that I’d pay another $50 dollars to play the same thing next year. Although there is certainly room for improvement in the future: more/better songs, better board customization, bigger cities that required you to drive to where you wanted to skate.

· · · Zondaro

Second Opinion

As a long-time THPS fan, I can honestly say that THUG probably ranks up there as my second favourite game, right behind THPS2. Why? It's due to the the skating lines being extremely tight, and the well executed courses. There were no stupid courses like the cruise ship from THPS3 in the game, or the Refinery. With THPS4, it felt like I was playing a game that I've been playing for months... which is probably because it was structured exactly like Aggressive Inline. In the end, I felt that the courses took a backseat in the past two games, because they were never as good as the ones in the second game. With THUG, I can actually "feel" the courses again like I did so many years ago.

Although the environments that you can skate in are great, I feel that it's only a runner-up to THPS2 for all the reasons why everyone else is hyping the game up. I think that the series has lost its focus in Underground with the ability to drive around in different vehicles and being able to get off your skateboard. Both feel like they were last minute additions into the game, and I think that they should've been left out. When I was playing the game for the first time, I wasn't "getting" the whole concept of jacking cars and taking them for a joy ride. I'm sure that other people will feel differently than me, but the Grand Theft Auto approach works with some games, it doesn't work here. If anything, THUG should've had an RPG mode similar to the ones found in Mario Tennis and Mario Golf for the Gameboy, where you're actually on tour for a season like in the X-Games. I think that would've been a much better fit for this game than the free roaming gameplay we're given instead.

In the end I don't think the choices that Neversoft made with THUG make that much of a difference to me. The way you play the game now is just fine; I would've preferred something else though. As it is, I can't complain too much. I'm still loving the game, although no online play is very disappointing. If you're a Tony Hawk fan, you'll definitely enjoy this game.

Rating: A-

· · · Reno