It’s often been pointed out that a certain grandiose car-stealing game currently popular with playfully stationary gamers (a game that’s incidentally coming to Xbox in early 2005, according to many reliable reports) featured a single innovation that made everything else in the game a success—players were allowed, for the first time, to “get out of the car” and explore the game world at will. This same principle of open-ended exploration and deep environments (in which you can roam, if you want to) has been seen at work in such diverse Xbox titles as the fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and the racing title Midtown Madness 3(sometimes getting out of the car isn’t as important as driving wherever you want). And, with another sure-fire Xbox classic in the making, Tony Hawk’s Underground (currently being fine-tuned by the boarding enthusiasts at Activision) gives gamers the chance to break up the action and wander all over the freakin’ place. It’s truly a gameplay breakthrough for its genre.
Take a Walk, Hawk As the Tony Hawk series has become refined over the years, almost no move has been left untouched or unexplored—except the simple act of getting off your board (violently leaving your board doesn’t count, unless you wear your shoes on your head). By simply giving players the opportunity to hop off and carry the board, the designers have created a game that’s no longer just an extreme sports sim—though that element is as sharp as ever. They’ve also built a darn fine-looking skateboard-adventure game.
You’ll start off as a no-count skate punk with one goal: to rise to the top of the pro skate circuit (probably not too much of a stretch for many Tony Hawk fans). As you progress through the game’s nine huge levels, you can eventually build up a reputation worthy of Hawk himself and earn the Skater of the Year title—if you’ve got the skills, patience, and tricks. Even if your skills are a bit rusty or your patience is wearing thin, you can still have fun—the game’s Normal and Insanely Difficult play modes are complemented by a mercifully forgiving Easy setting.
Grinding Gears (Among Other Things) So, why would you want to get off the board, anyway? Lots of good reasons, young skate enthusiast. Some level objectives will require you to climb a building or otherwise move and shimmy in a way that just ain’t practical on a skateboard (unlike the more, er, fanciful Jet Set Radio Future, Tony Hawk’s Underground doesn’t necessarily let you grind straight up a vertical drainpipe—but you can climb one). You might also want to try your hand at some more traditional vehicles, like sports cars, motorcycles, and your very own feet. Those little beauties at the ends of your legs can also give you access to hidden areas, where you can rack up bonus points and beat secret objectives. You might even find yourself shimmying along a phone line, like Sam Fisher in a pair of Vans.
Though your skater is pretty resilient and still takes face plants with the best of them, some objects in the world of Tony Hawk’s Underground break at times. But, you can perform maintenance and fix objects when needed, especially your board.
Complete Control The Tony Hawk skating control system has already proven such a success that Tony Hawk’s Underground doesn’t bother to re-invent the wheel. If anything, Activision and the developers at Neversoft have put on a set of whitewalls with gleaming gold-plated hubcaps. The controls feel even smoother than before, and since you can pick up your board and take it with you, you get the chance to try out tricks in previously unimaginable places.
One of the mainstays of the Hawk franchise on Xbox has been the Skate Park Editor, which now lets you build even bigger parks, and more importantly, lets you redesign the game. You can add characters, dialog, objectives, goals, S-K-A-T-E letters, and just about anything else you want in your own homemade levels. And, naturally, the Create-a-Skater has become even more detailed (it takes a lot of work to create the same skater twice). But, are you ready for Create-a-Trick? Tony Hawk’s Underground lets you get in Hawk’s brain, as it were, and design your own insane combo moves that are yours and yours alone … perfect for schooling unsuspecting fellow gamers.
Tony Hawk is taking it Underground for a sports game adventure that mixes roleplaying, skateboarding, driving, and exploration with traditional trick-based play that’s already the best in the genre. Get onboard—and off the board—in Fall 2003.
