I must say I was reluctant when I popped this one into my console. The first one was good on it's own standards, the second one was a simple clone with improvements. Though the third one did show innovation, THPS 4 shattered that all. I must say that with Underground, my opinion on the Tony Hawk series has changed entirely. Tony Hawk's Underground is about as groundbreaking as the first one when it came out, and it deserves more attention then it is getting at the moment.
Gameplay: The gameplay of Underground oozes with imagination. It's the same THPS gameplay you should be familiar with, but with a few very significant twists. For the first time, you can actually get off your board and run around the place like a madman. It is very fun and cool to try and climb rooftops and ladders just to see what's at the top. Along with that, Neversoft had to the idea to add driving to the game. Yes, driving in a skateboarding game. Although the cars don't even drive semi-realistically, it's still a lot of fun. The missions in the game are very well varied. There are up to 15 missions per level, in which there a handful of levels, including ones from THPS 2. Some of the missions make for the best experience in Underground: some objectives will ask you to do menial tasks like tape a skater while he does his thing, or to do complicated tasks like overheat a car and dump it in the river, netting the owner the insurance money. You even get to jump a helicopter from on-top a building. Very cool. But what would the missions be without a story to back them up? There is a full story in Underground following you and some friends as you try to reach stardom that is a skateboarding legend - this ain't no Tony Hawk 4 storyline either. The story has it all: love, betrayal, and revenge. You'll feel hate for some characters while you'll feel pity for others. As an addition, they also included a Create-a-deck, option, a Create-a-move option, and beefed up the Level Editor and Character Editors.
Though the new modes aren't incredibly deep, they're still a lot of fun to play around with.
Sound: The sound in Underground is typical to that of any other THPS game. This means the music selection is still a superbly selected list, the sound effects are nice and crisp, and with the addition of a lot of character voices, you can't speak ill of the sound in THPS: UG.
Graphics: The graphics, in my opinion seem to be the only thing going wrong for this game. Though the graphics are in no way horrible, they could have looked better. It would have been a step forward from THPS 4. The game still looks nice - the levels are very varied and all look different from one another. Though the character models aren't very different (you will see the same model in many levels as a different character), they still look good. There are some clipping issues and graphical glitches, but it's easy to ignore them when so much else is good about the game.
Overall, Underground is a big step forward, displaying a heap of innovation and creativity, and shows that the creators at Neversoft haven't run out of fuel just yet. I highly recommend it and I anticipate sequels in the future.
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