Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

Neversoft rips hardcore in the only skating game in town -- don't you dare miss out on this one.

A couple of months ago, give or take, when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was still in development and I was out of a job, I had heard that an early version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 was shaping up very nicely. I had played the first into the night countless times and never once thought it in such calm, passive terms. I always believed it was insanely great -- one of the best games I had ever played. So, when I finally got my hands on the one-level demo of the game, I couldn't believe how much the game had been refined, realigned and reinvigorated. It seriously kicked 31 flavors of @ss.

Well, now that I have finished it, I'm no longer confused, because if I do my math right, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

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now kicks at least 248 flavors of @ss, and that's not even counting the levels you can make yourself in the skatepark editor. If I ever wind up stuck on a desert island with nothing but a PlayStation and a few select games, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is one game I will definitely own.

This is a brilliant refinement of an already brilliant game -- it looks better, it sounds better, it still has some of the best control in the business, and it's packed full of even more secrets and features than before. If you skate, you'll love it, and if you cringe in terror at the thought of the merest skinned knee, you'll probably enjoy it even more, because while Tony Hawk 2 is a great skateboarding game, more than that it's just a great action game, one of the finest challenges to your hand-eye coordination that money has ever been able to buy.

If you missed the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, too bad for you, but the game's structure and control is easy to pick up. It's a skateboarding blend of sim and arcade play, a free-roaming adventure on a board around large, obstacle-filled 3D areas. It's not a race, like Top Skater and Street Sk8er -- rather than going from point A to point B, you can go anywhere you want to, and your goal is to pull off tricks and complete other tests of your twitching skill. The level of freedom is absolute, and in combination with the finest of fine control, that creates a game with as much replay value as anything around, past or present. It's honestly as addictive as action games used to be -- like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, you can actually get into the unending challenge of seeing how much you can do and how far you can go.

I'd like to talk a little bit more about that control I mentioned. Tony Hawk 2 controls tightly. It's in a rarefied category with games like Quake III and Soul Calibur, games that do exactly what you want them to, exactly when you want them to. It's hard to appreciate something like this until you've had to play a lot of badly designed games, like we game editors generally have to do. When you go from the clumsy handling of some other skateboarding games to the absolute precision of Tony Hawk, it's like stepping into the sunlight. When you want to go somewhere, you go there. You can ollie on demand and easily control your distance and hang time. Do a quick double-tap before you jump and you can get extra hight with a nollie or fastplant maneuver. When you want to do a trick, just tap a direction and the square or circle button and it happens - the game will reel them off as fast as you can input the commands, unless you overdo it and bail. It's easy to aim for a rail or lip and land grinds, and you can control your balance with the left and right buttons. Take off from a vert ramp and you can control your rotation with either the D-pad or the shoulder buttons, both of which spin your skater with unfailing ease.

In short, it's Tony Hawk -- as good as the first, which is about as good as it gets. There are far more tricks to pull off, though, as well as far more room in which to pull them, and one substantial addition: the manual. A manual is a visually simple trick, just like the more commonly known "wheelie" on a bicycle (although that's actually called a manual too, but no matter). It consists of rolling along while balanced on the back wheels of the skateboard; there's also the nose manual, which is the same thing, except with the front wheels. You couldn't do this in the first game, but you can easily manual in Tony Hawk 2, by tapping up and down on the D-pad quickly for a manual, or down and up for a nose manual. Do it on the ground and you'll automatically start rolling, but you can also do it in the air, and land directly into the trick.

If you played the first Tony Hawk, you probably have an idea of what this means. If you didn't, a little explanation is warranted as far as how you progress in playing the game. It's not immediately obvious when you pick it up, but the key to Tony Hawk isn't just running around doing tricks -- that's fun, but simply pulling off lots of vert tricks or individual grinds isn't going to earn you many points. The key to the game is combinations, linking together a continuous string of tricks. If you do multiple tricks in sequence, like two or three tricks while in the air, or jumping from rail to rail while doing flip tricks in between, you score points for each trick, but that score is in turn multiplied by the number of tricks in the combination. The longer your string, then, the more each trick is worth.

In the first game, you could only pull off combinations by jumping from rail to rail, or grabbing as much air as you could. Now, however, the manual counts as a trick, so you can roll from rail to rail and ramp to ramp, stretching out your combo as long as you can tap out those tricks and keep your speed up. You also have to maintain your balance -- when you're in a manual, a little balance meter appears by your skater, and you have to try and keep the indicator centered with the up and down D-pad buttons. Using features of the level is still important, finally, since you can't manual forever. No matter how many tricks you pull, you'll eventually run out of speed if you can't find a slope, rail, or ramp to accelerate.

That's what sold me on the concept of the manual, although I was a little worried that it might unbalance the game early on. In conjunction with the level design, the limitations on the manual keep its capabilities within reason. It does change the game's character a little, though, along with other factors like a shift in level design (which I'll discuss later).

Appropriately, Rodney Mullen is one of the series' three new pro skaters, since while Tony Hawk is actually the guy on the package, it's Mullen's type of skating that will earn you the most points. The package would be complete if they had Daewon Song, but he was in Grind Session, so no such luck. At any rate, you have to perfect the exaggerated videogame equivalent of their very technical street style, with a little bit of vert thrown in to top off the really big scores.

Reflecting that change in style, Tony Hawk 2's level design differs a little from the first game. There are no longer any linear, Top Skater-style levels, like the mall or the Phoenix downhill - instead, all eight levels (five free-skate levels and three competition parks) are free-roaming, go-anywhere areas. There's the Hangar, reminiscent of the first game's warehouse, a second School level with a great secret section, city levels in New York and Philadelphia, a maze-like Venice Beach level with tons of secret transfers, and three competition parks: Skatestreet, Marseilles, and the Bullring. Skatestreet and Marseilles are actually based on real-life parks, making them impressive enough as re-creations, but the Bullring is still the standout, a huge round arena full of transfers, rails, a giant bull to be dodged (or tricked off), and even the famous full pipe from Tony Hawk's razor commercials.

There aren't as many obvious lines as in the first game, but between the open design and the new manuals, you have much, much more freedom to pick your own lines and try to pull off all kinds of different combos, and actually there are tons more lines to find; you'll just have to find them on your own. The levels have nice small variations in character, too. The hangar is pretty simple, but there are high rails to hop up to and big constructions to slide on, like parked helicopters and planes (try grinding the chopper's rotor blades). The school is big and open, with a lot of empty space to manual around and high rooves to hop up to. Venice is a maze of quarterpipe transfers and roof gaps, which makes completing all the level goals an interesting challenge -- the "ollie the magic bum" goal is still dogging me. New York is reminiscent of the old street levels, like San Francisco and Minnesota, while Philly is a huge mess of stairs and ledges that you could grind for hours, along with a cool hidden concrete park for vert and lip tricks.

All of the levels are so well made that it's impossible for me to pick a favorite. Every one is expertly designed, full of lines and transfers, and just about every level has secret unlockable areas you can find, revealed by grinding certain objects or completing certain transfers. It's unsettling to wander around one for the first time and think "wow, this is big," only to realize a little later that it's half again as big as you thought. You don't have to finish every goal to complete the career mode, but you'll definitely go back to every level many times, just to see what you can do there, and perhaps complete your catalog of gaps if you're really serious. One of the nice new touches in the options menu is a gap listing, showing which ones you've found in each level and which ones remain.

Though its style of play differs a little, then, Hawk 2 is structured in the much the same way as its predecessor. You pick a pro skater and set off through the career mode, working your way through progressively more difficult levels by accomplishing a variety of goals and challenges. There are twice as many challenges for each of the five free-skate levels, though (although the three competition levels are the same as in the first game) and your skater's progression outside the level is a little different. You're not working to collect tapes this time -- instead, the currency is cash, which you collect by completing level goals and grabbing bonus icons scattered about the level. You spend that to upgrade all the things that progressed automatically in the first game, buying new decks and improvements to your stats, and in the biggest change from the original Hawk, you can also buy new tricks.

This element of the game merits a little discussion on its own. Now, you can spend cash to buy new tricks and customize your skater's trick set. If you want to be able to do a particular trick, all you need is the money - you can pick it up and assign it to whatever button combination you want. The tricks you already know can be moved to new buttons as well, so you can set things up just how you like for more effective combinations. Best of all, if you want to learn new special tricks, you can. You're limited to a total of five at any given time, and they cost an arm and a leg, but if you really want to be able to do one of the other skaters' signature moves, you can.

The ability to customize your stats and tricks gives you much more freedom than before. You'll still wind up with maxed-out stats at the end of the career mode, but being able to develop them how you want to is handy at times. For example, if you're stuck in the school level, bonking the wall every time you try to launch yourself up to the secret tape, you can spend all your cash on your air and hangtime stats, making the leap a little easier. Later on, when you're trying to get extra-high trick scores for the competitions, you can set up your tricks how you like to pull off the best combos. If you want really high scores for your grind combos, you can buy an extra special grind to kick up your point totals.

Tony Hawk 2 doesn't change the graphic style of the series, but it does look much, much better than before. The character models are bigger, with more polygons to smooth them out, there's some interesting lighting in places like New York and Marseilles, and the texture work throughout the game is very much improved. Skatestreet has its giant mural, the old concrete park in Marseilles has detailed graffiti all over the place, and the richness of color and shading has generally increased. Just the ground in Marseilles looks impressive, or the walls in the hangar, covered in fading signage. Each character has a fair bit more detail to their faces and clothes, like Steve Caballero's striped hoodie, the safety gear outfits for the vert skaters, and Bob Burnquist's glasses. I regret the loss of Chad Muska's boombox, but I suppose you can't have it all.

The character animation is up to the same standards as the first game, but now there's much, much more of it -- more basic tricks, and many more complex special trick animations. Tony Hawk's 900 is as impressive as ever, Steve Caballero has a majestic 540 frontflip, and characters smoothly transition into ridiculously complex grinds. The movements never miss a beat, and the framerate isn't an issue, buzzing along without a hitch no matter what you do or where you go. Even big moving background elements, like the trains in Philly and New York or the helicopter takeoff in the hangar, don't affect things -- unless you get in the way of the train, that is.

Altogether, the only nagging problem with Hawk 2's graphics is a little bit of draw-in that still appears in the bigger levels. Marseilles and the school don't quite have a far enough horizon to prevent walls and such from fading in from time to time. It's a little visually disconcerting, but it's nowhere near enough of a problem to affect gameplay -- I only mention it out of a desire for completeness, really.

The punk/ska soundtrack of the original Tony Hawk is about half gone - volume 2 has a more varied sound, with vestiges of punk, some more conventional rock, and an eclectic selection of hip-hop tracks to balance things out. The variety of bands is remarkable, from Top 40 acts like Papa Roach and Rage Against the Machine to Alley Life and Black Planet, who are appearing in recorded form for the first time in 10 years of playing. Anyway, it's always down to personal taste, but I like more than enough of the songs myself to give it a thumbs-up, and the new track switch function enables you to listen to whichever song you want (great for skipping over Papa Roach and Powerman 5000). Also, in the free skate mode, the tracks cycle through while you skate instead of repeating like they did in the first game. There's a brief load between songs, naturally, but the graphics don't hiccup the way they do in MTV Sports Skateboarding.

The effects suite is more notable for its highlights than in a general sense, but you'll definitely laugh out loud once or twice, whether it's when an Indian cabbie mows you down and curses at you, or when you skate over a heap of bull dung with predictably squishy results. The crowd cheers in the competition levels are a nice touch as well, with varying degrees of intensity depending on how sick your combos are, as well as a loud "aaaawwwwww" when you bail and lose it all. The more common effects aren't head-turners, but they do their job well. The mid-range grinding noise is solid and inoffensive, and trick combos unfold with a nice schick-schick-schick, punctuated occasionally by the satisfying chime of a special trick.

Aside from all this talk about style and level design, there are two clearly massive additions to Tony Hawk 2: the ability to create your own skateparks and your own custom skaters. Both of these creation modes are very versatile, well-designed, and provide even more replay value on top of what the game already possesses. Create-a-skater lets you build yourself (or a close approximation) or any number of skating homonculi, design a custom trick set, and go through the career mode like any of the pro skaters. The number of cosmetic options is excellent, and it's pretty easy to pinpoint what you want, although I wish the color selections were more easily handled. You have to flip through the options one by one, instead of picking from one big palette, and since there's far more selections for color than for any other options, you have to scroll through the list for an awfully long time to find your favorite.

But that's just nitpicking, and any number of small flaws like that pale before the create-a-park mode, which we could play with more or less forever. You can't build anything quite the size of the stock levels, but the largest size option (there are three) is plenty big, and created parks can hold enough objects for a ton of lines, transfers, and cool extras. As we detailed earlier, you can fill your park with ramps, rails, kickers, funboxes, and all kinds of other odds and ends. There's also a gap editor, so you can have special gaps and transfers with whatever silly name you want, just like in the real game. IGN Guides' Chris Carle, for example, has created his very own IGN skatepark, with gaps like the "El Sexo Hop," the "Reverend Air," the "Neelix Gap," and the curiously-named "Wanna Hump." If you don't like the look of the basic warehouse-style level, there are multiple level themes with a lot of variety between them, and if you're looking for a little inspiration, the editor contains about 30-odd pre-created custom levels.


If it could get any better than this, I'm not sure how. We'll know when Neversoft brings out part three for the PS2, I guess. Meanwhile, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is one of the best games to ever grace this or any console. It looks great, it sounds great, it controls perfectly, and it brings you back for more in so many ways. The hidden areas, the hidden gaps, the secret characters (including Officer Dick, a teenage Powell-era Tony, and more), the archive of righteous FMV clips, they're all a great incentive to keep playing, but besides all that, this game is just a ton of fun to play. When was the last time you played a game where you were seriously interested in racking up a record score? Heck, when was the last time you played a game that kept score at all?

It occurs to me that I've spent thousands of words saying something that could be summed up in a single sentence, one mentioned by a friend of mine when he was talking about a 15-year-old Bones Brigade skate tape (it was "Animal Chin," for you trivia buffs). So like he said, Tony Hawk Rips Hardcore. Pick it up and you won't regret it.


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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

Rated "T"
DeveloperNeversoft Entertainment
Release DateOctober 24, 2000
PlatformsPC, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Game Boy Color, Dreamcast, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, Macintosh, iPhone
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2