Tony Hawk’s Underground
Gamecube
Activision


The next instalment of the very successful Tony Hawk skateboarding video games is Tony Hawk’s Underground (lovingly referred to by many a gamer as "THUG") has been highly anticipated since the "Coming Soon!" cases hit the shelves of retailers. And with good reason: THUG is by far the best of all the games with Tony Hawk’s name attached to the title. But beyond smoother graphics, bigger level size, more intense gameplay and more extravagant guest appearances (imagine, if you will, skating across the stage at a KISS concert - priceless), ‘THUG’ has the one ingredient missing from it’s predecessors: a storyline. And a pretty damn good one at that.

After spending the good part of an hour creating a spitting image of yourself with the Create-A-Skater, your story begins as a local kid skating around your New Jersey neighbourhood with your best friend Eric. As the game progresses you enter competitions, get sponsored, hook up with the brand of your choice, turn pro, travel the world to skate in locations such as Hawaii and Moscow, get a signature shoe, crash an army tank through a building, get stabbed in the back by your so-called best friend and eventually stick it to The Man and form your own back-to-your-roots team. And it’s not all just skateboarding this time either - you even get to drive around in cars and karts and ride on lawnmowers to complete some tasks during the game; fun stuff! Plus there’s three difficulty levels in story mode so once you’ve beaten the easy levels it’s time to take it up a notch.

However, after you finish the story the game does get a little mundane. There’s still a lot of things to do in the free skate, like finding hidden tokens, but it gets old quite quickly. There are however, a lot of ways to personalise the game, allowing you to create your own tricks, skateboard decks, levels and goals.

It’s a shame though that Gamecube hasn’t yet brought out a console link system like Playstation, as the PS2 version of THUG enables you to play against your friends in the next neighbourhood using a broadband internet connection. Also gamers who like myself are still coming to terms with the Gamecube controllers will find some moves tricky to get their head around, and will therefore be stuck on the same task for hours on end. But when all’s said and done, THUG is an amazing game and by far the best in the series.

Ryan Smith