The name change isn’t entirely superficial.
Tony Hawks is back and while this remains a Tony Hawk game the name change isn’t entirely superficial. This is a Tony Hawks game with a slight edge and a slightly different feel than what you will be used to if you’re a regular of the series. The team hasn’t just rested on the success of the previous games this time around, it would have been so much easier to just implement a few new features and tricks and stick a Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 label on it. The career mode hasn’t dramatically changed, the basic concept of skating around without the added pressure of a time limit is still in place and the goals while manipulated in a different way are still essentially the same goals you will have played through many times before.
The story mode is centered on a skater that you must create in order to start, not some random professional of your choosing but a completely new and amateur skater. This game has the option of adding your face into the game if you want a completely realistic look but honestly that has a few too many glitches to be of any real use. Once you’ve done this you can delve into the story mode and begin talking to people scattered around each level. Each level has a certain amount of goals you must complete before you can move on to the “trigger goal” which unlocks the next level and next set of new goals for you to embark upon. To be honest I am not the biggest fan of this format and you are usually forced into changing to the next level without any real say in the matter. I personally got tired of moving onto the next section and then back-tracking to the previous level just to complete the goals the story mode forced me to miss. The story mode is solid once you get past this and fits the title of Underground rather well, you start in New Jersey and you slowly make your way to the big time. The game even gives you a cliché rival and often sees you competing against him in order to obtain certain goals.
This game has an impressive 27 chapters, unfortunately with the amount of goals for you to complete, once you have completed them you are left feeling rather unimpressed. Most of them follow the same trend and more than most just don’t really fit into the whole story and the feel I believe the game is trying to achieve. This game does have an exclusive to the series though and this comes in the form of multiple difficulty settings. There are four modes: too easy, beginner, medium and hard. While the career is the same for all levels the higher the difficulty increases the more demanding each goal becomes. A beginner goal may require obtaining 20,000 points; the hardest difficulty could see you attempting to reach 2,000,000. A welcome addition as far as I am concerned, this way the game can appeal to new players in the series and also give the veterans a chance to test their skills.
Perhaps the biggest feature of Underground is the ability to step off your board at any time with a simple tap of both L1 and R1 together. You can run around levels, climb up the side of buildings and access some areas previously inaccessible through your regular skating. They have also implemented this idea into the trick side of the game, you can now jump off your board within a combo and this gives you that breathing space between vert and grind tricks. While the manuals already do this it does add a new dimension to tricks, you can begin your combo on the ground then quickly jump off your board. Climb a ladder or change direction and then continue your combo before your walk limit runs out. Another new feature that is worth a mention is the wall plant which sees jumping off walls to go in the opposite direction rather than smashing your face into it an option. The series may only be adding small things to their trick system each time like skitching for example but each one creates new possibilities within your combos and that’s what counts.
The level design in Underground has a lot more of a realistic feel to it, the levels are also a lot larger than in previous games and the majority will have their fair share of secret areas for you to explore. Each level seems to accommodate the vert skaters and the street skaters amongst us really rather well and subtly moves the action from one area to the next with a sneaky ramp or some sort of grind pipe that will help you change direction. The pro skaters are to be found in the game, they can be found standing around various levels waiting to give you a new trick slot and occasionally show up in the story related goals. All the pros are playable through other various modes and there are some new additions to the line up like Mike Vallely who is now in the default skater and not an unlockable.
The way you upgrade your stats for this game is radically different, rather than going around collecting various stat points or completing various challenges and have them be handed to you. This time you must complete a series of mini-challenges that will raise your stats for you, for example holding a manual for a specific amount of time will see your manual stat raise by 1. This is a much more realistic way of raising your stats and in order to achieve full stats in everything you must first turn pro. This thankfully prevents you from gaining a full set of stats before you even complete the first level. The cash collecting has also been thrown out of the window and instead you unlock characters by completing the various levels of difficulty within the story mode. You unlock retro levels by finding various hidden level icons and you can also collect tapes which predictably unlock new movies. While the unlockables here are good they just don’t have the impact that they once did, let’s hope there are some cooler characters next time around.
While Tony Hawks Underground is a nice looking game it doesn’t astound, the levels are sprawled with great looking objects and textures and the animations are some of the best seen in the series. However the character modeling is bordering on awful and there are some graphical glitches that just should not be found in a game of this caliber. The sound while good still has most of the same sounds clips that have been with us since the 3rd installment and while that was ok for the last game it isn’t entirely acceptable for this. There are some great new sound effects though and these at least half make up for the developers lack of effort. The soundtrack is as amazing as always: KISS, The Clash and NOFX to name just a few. There are actually an amazing 70+ tracks featured within this game and that is impressive by anyone’s standards.
I think the park editor should also get a mention because they have decided to make vast improvements with it. You can now add your own goals to your levels from a wide range of classics, any Hawk fan will spend hours upon hours hiding skate letters in the trickiest places and making secret areas that only they can find. It’s one of those features that could sell this game alone and I personally have wasted nights on perfecting levels for my friends to test, it’s almost as fun as playing through the goals the game offers you. Online play also returns and while essentially the same does allow you to view other gamers high scores to see how well you match against the best in the world and the worst.
All-in-all this game does what it set out to achieve but unfortunately doesn’t have quite the impact I’m sure it was striving for. While the gameplay is as solid as ever it is wasted on the same repetitive goals throughout the story mode and while the story does have potential it just doesn’t live up to it. This is a must for any Hawk fan though and with the addition of various difficulties I would say this will be a welcome start for any newbie looking to embark upon the series. I would advise you to play Tony Hawks 3 and 4 afterwards though to get a real sense of where this series came from and what made it so great in the first place.
