Tony Hawk's Underground 2

aka: THUG 2
Moby ID: 15197
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is the sixth game in the Tony Hawk series.

As an aspiring pro skater, you're invited to join Tony Hawk in an around-the-world underground skating competition known as the "World Destruction Tour." It's Team Hawk against Team Bam in a no-holds-barred contest to gain the most points by performing insane stunts and raising havoc in cities all over the world.

THUG 2's story mode basically follows the same formula as THUG, in which you have to complete a number of goals before you can move on to the next city.

Re-introduced into the series is the "Classic Mode" wherein you have 2 minutes to complete as many goals as possible on any of THUG 2's levels and 6 remade classic levels.

THUG 2 has all-new unlockable characters, vehicles, levels.

All the Create-A-Modes from THUG are present, with the addition of the new Create-A-Graphic mode where you can make your own graffiti design with layers of text and predefined graphics, then use it to "tag up" during gameplay.

THUG 2 supports online play (Playstation 2 only) and 2-player split-screen modes in a variety of new and classic multiplayer games.

Spellings

  • 托尼霍克地下滑板2 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (Windows version)

333 People (274 developers, 59 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 40 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 53 ratings with 3 reviews)

Better than the last one

The Good
Well the game boasts Underground, Classic, and Multiplayer modes, along with Character and Park Creation, and a unique build level for your skater. I liked the variety of each skating location and how much fun this game really is, whether pulling off insane stunts, causing mischief around town, or just exploring the many locales this game has to offer. There are also many pre-made parks that are ready to be thrashed as well as some old familiar parks from the last 4 Tony Hawk games all compiled into one. While the realism factor isn't implemented, meaning you can pull off some crazy tricks, with the funky control scheme.

The graphics and effects are pretty good, runs well on a low-end system and the parks are big with tons of secrets to discover with lots of gaps to unlock. There are ending movies for each skater like they did in THPS 3.

The soundtrack is a mixture of punk, hip-hop, and classics such as The Ramones, Johnny Cash, or The Doors, which I really liked for a skateboard game. The voice acting is superb with cameos from Wee Man, Steve-O, Bam Margera, and even Phil Margera lend their voices to the game, along with a plethora of other skateboarders.



The Bad
The control scheme is awkward and hard to pull off a successful revert and manual with the keyboard, maybe on a gamepad it be easier. The default keys are horrible and resort back to the console port of the game. I found out that remapping the controls to the original Tony Hawk 2 or 3 games works like a charm.

There's a little problem with skateboarders getting stuck in corners and unable to move around due to the bad camera controls. Which can lead to headaches because of disorientating views. Their is a camera control to zoom in or rotate the skater while 'on foot' but nevertheless another flaw to a good game.

The Bottom Line
Besides the clunky controls and bad camera angles, this game is really fun to play and has tons of secrets to unlock and many mission-based objectives to complete offering a free-roaming, go anywhere, environment, do whatever you want and cause mayhem. If you liked THPS3 and other Hawk games, you'll definitely enjoy this one!

Windows · by Twilightseer (252) · 2006

Nostalgia isn't everything

The Good
Tony Hawk's Underground 2 is an attempt to mix the show Jackass (featuring Bam and Steve-O who also appear in this game) with professional skateboarding, which to me is like mixing girls with cornflakes, it's combining two amazing things. I used to be quite a skate fan when I was a kid, but recently I have been more into Jackass, but I discovered both skating and Jackass thanks to this game. Buying this game for nine euros felt like a great idea, but I promised myself to be a reasonable person and try to judge this game like I'd judge any other game. I hope I succeeded in doing this.

This game is for the most part about skating which can be a huge problem because skateboarding is a pretty big sport with hundreds of tricks and stunts, binding all those tricks to specific commands that can be performed with a controller is pretty hard, but also making it playable is even harder. However this game isn't as unplayable as you'd expect, in fact it's pretty intuitive and easy to learn. The red button does all the flips with the board, Y grinds on stuff, X is grapple moves and that takes care off 80% of all the tricks in the game. The idea is that you do something specific with the stick in order to pull off a trick once you press the button, kinda like in a 2D fighting game and this works amazingly well. The story mode also allows the players to get better as they play by slowly steering them towards more difficult tricks as they progress through the campaign.

The story goes like this: Tony Hawk and Bam from Jackass are organizing a tour around the world where they skateboard and destroy large parts of the city, both Tony and Bam have their own team and members of the team are rewarded with points if they manage to perform certain tasks while skating. The team that loses has to pay for the entire trip, but every level ends with a wheel of fortune deciding the fate of the losing team. It's a very enjoyable story and it sounds like an awesome idea when Tony explains it to the participating skaters.

The most awesome part of the game are of course the countries you get to visit/ruin as part of the competition, mostly because there is a nice variety and there is just so much to destroy and skate on. You start out in Boston, followed by Barcelona, Berlin, Sydney and quite a few other interesting locations scattered across the globe. Each level has a unique design, lots of secrets, special stunts you can only do there and it's own special guests that will help you out.

You have the option to make your own skater, tag, stunts and even your very own skate park. Not only is having that many options awesome, but the fact that it's all very easy to use and figure out makes it all the better. Making your own tag and character are pretty standard and I doubt anybody will not do this, but making your own map is a very rare option which I am obligated to declare my love to every time I see it. Making your own part is also pretty easy, you get a list of different types of objects, you click on the list you want and you get to see images of the items you can place. I love you Neversoft.

There is an emphasis on humor which is one of the best ways to go when presenting me with a genre (sports) that I am not really interested in. Most of the humor is the very similar to Jackass in which people end up hurting themselves badly or pulling pranks on people they don't like, the unlikable idiot in this game is Nigel Beverhausen, an insane, fat news-reporter that badly wants to record and sell the tour even though there wouldn't be any publicity during the event. The rest of the humor is a lot like Psychonauts when the player is just stuck in the middle of over the top scenes that always bear a surprise or two.

4-player multi-player that can be played with content created by the players themselves, damn the GameCube was a great console for multi-player games. The game is already chaotic enough on it's own, but adding in three other players who all want to destroy everything they can somehow makes it even better, especially when one of those targets includes other players. If you decide to try this multi-player out, then be ready for a lot of tomatoes to your face and punches to the face because everybody is a troll when it comes to virtual skating.

The Bad
The story-mode in incredibly linear and your barely matter. The idea is that you have to reach a certain amount of points before you're allowed to move on to the next level, but even if you complete all the objectives in the map, you can still lose because the story doesn't change depending on how many points you score. This makes it very annoying that there are a lot of objectives because it pretty much means those are just to give people who aren't that good at the game the option to skip the hard ones. The best stories are the ones that change depending on the player's actions, but here it just doesn't matter what you do because the ending to every single level was already determined before you even started.

While there is a lot of skating, I was always noticing that the destruction part was rather absent in the World Destruction Tour", sure there were a few things to destroy in every level, but almost 70% of the objectives are just skate-tricks you need to perform and quite a lot of missions have you fixing stuff instead. There are also one or two recurring objectives, like every stage having you remove graffiti by painting your own tag over it. You just can't help but noticing that the developers ran out of ideas rather quickly and had to use the stupid idea bucket in order to still fill up the game.

The game is rather short, if you wrap your head around the controls rather fast, you will find yourself able to finish the game within one or two sittings on the first or second difficulty setting. I have never played the first game, but I could think of a lot more locations the game could have used; Amsterdam, Russia, Hawaii, Easter-island or maybe even Hollywood. There are so many locations that you could have us destroy, so it feels weird that we don't get to see any of them and instead start of with the incredibly boring Boston level.

The Bottom Line
I only have a few complains about this game, but they are very severe indeed; it's short, the story is very linear and the destruction part of the game gets way too less screen-time. However I still give this game a very positive score because it is amazing to play a skating game that controls so easily and I really like the characters and story (oh and did you know there is a map-making tool?!).

Whether you like this game or not largely depends on how you think about skate-boarding, if you just think it's a bunch of suicidal-idiots on a piece of wood with wheels on it, then this game probably won't change your mind (maybe it will make you hate the sport even more). However if it sounds interesting to you or if you are already watching/participating in it, then I can pretty much guarantee you that you won't regret buying Tony Hawk's Underground 2. Keep in mind though: don't try these stunts at home!

GameCube · by Asinine (957) · 2011

Much like THUG, but with a cool new twist to it.

The Good
What I liked about this game: New customizable things, such as voice, many new types for arms, height, muscles, face mask, etc. and the fact that you can upload a picture of your face ONTO the character (from USB through digital camera, or upload from internet)! But now enough of that, its time to move onto the levels. Most of the levels were pretty expansive, with the opportunity to switch your character to a Pro skater, or the "Guest" skater, such as a clown, and a "Secret" skater, which really isn't a skater at all, since they use motorized karts. There are many unlock-able things in the levels if you either randomly do something, or you put 2 and 2 together and figure out something.

The Bad
What I didn't like about this game was that it seemed too much like THUG and the THPS games, although there were some new tricks, and characters (which there HAVE to be with a game like this). It seemed that the game was over too early, and that's just about all I can find wrong...

The Bottom Line
This is generally a pretty good game - 8/10 - which delivers almost the same gameplay of THUG (Tony Hawk's Underground), but due to some minor things which degrade overall gameplay, it doesn't get the 9/10 it could have.

PlayStation 2 · by Mattz1010 (14) · 2004

Trivia

References

There's a bar called "Jeers" on the Boston level. This makes fun of the old TV sitcom Cheers.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – #5 GameCube Game of the Year
    • 2004 – #8 PS2 Game of the Year

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Lucefin.

Windows added by Kabushi.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Link Ramza, Patrick Bregger.

Game added October 15, 2004. Last modified March 11, 2024.