E-Mail This Article to a Friend THUG life In 2 deep BY RYAN STEWART
	Tony Hawk's Underground 2 Published by Activision. Developed by Neversoft. For PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. Rated T for Teen.

The only professional skateboarder your mom might be able to recognize is back with the sixth game bearing his name, and it's bigger than ever. And Tony Hawk is coming for you this time, whether you want him to or not.

There were four Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, all of which had the same basic formula: skate around while accomplishing goals. Last year's Tony Hawk's Underground – the kids call it "THUG" - knocked the formula's socks on their asses, though, by giving the franchise a legitimate storyline and incorporating action off the skateboard.

Apparently, though, that wasn't enough for you greedy gamers, because the sequel, the recently released THUG 2, has added Classic Mode to a revamped Story Mode. The result is a huge game with hundreds upon hundreds of missions, a ridiculous amount of playable characters, and thousands of tired, blistered thumbs nationwide.

The gameplay is largely the same, but the story has been injected with some life in the sequel. It's clearly the main attraction here. You play an unknown skater – I created a reasonably faithful video Ryan Stewart in the beloved Create-A-Skater mode – who is kidnapped by Hawk and special guest, Bam Margera, to embark on a worldwide tour of destruction. It's Team Hawk vs. Team Bam with loser paying for the whole trip. Not quite Harvard vs. Yale, but intense nonetheless. Margera's participation is hardly a surprise: the only times Hawk has appeared on television in the past year has been on Margera's MTV show, Viva La Bam. You start on Hawk's team, and he's a nice enough guy, but at some point you get the chance to switch to Team Bam, who is a complete tool, just like he probably is in real life. I suppose this would make this game skateboarding's answer to Star Wars: Jedi Knights.

The skaters do their own voices, and be on the lookout for some cameos, such as the one from Bam's tortured mammoth of a father, Phil Margera. On each level, too, there are bonus characters to be unlocked, like Monster Garage's Jesse James, who lets you ride his tricked out Segway. Yes, you read that correctly. You can also unlock Ben Franklin in the Boston level, for some reason (any "Baby New Yorker" will tell you he was a Philly resident). Other than that, the Boston level, the story's first, is shockingly accurate, even complete with a Big Dig.

Those who have played Tony Hawk-related games before will find few surprises in the gameplay. It's tightened up some, and tricks are easier to land now. There's a new "focus" feature, which allows you to slow down the action, bullet-time style, to ensure you land that sick McTwist-backflip combo you were trying. If you don't land, though, and you find yourself annoyed, you can always hit the "Freak Out" button, and take your frustrations out by shattering your offending skateboard. Because, you know, that's the board's fault.

Anti-social behavior is a focus here, between pelting passersby with tomatoes and leaving your tag on walls, which is certainly a bonus for a game that can be maddeningly frustrating when you've tried to nail that trick – the one that's preventing you from clearing the level – for the fifth consecutive time. It balances out one of the negatives – degree of difficulty.

Gamers who are old enough to share a Miller High Life with Johnny Knoxville might bristle at the mix on the soundtrack, especially when punk-rock legends X segue into popsters Jimmy Eat World as though there weren’t anything wrong with that sentence. But if the tunes get a few fifteen-year-olds to listen to Joy Division, then it’s all right by me.

Overall, the game is good enough to keep fans of the franchise and newbies alike coming back for more. Kudos to Activision and Neversoft for giving us a huge game with some replay value, and for making the missions satisfying to complete. Even if the overall product isn’t that big of a leap from its predecessor, this Underground is worth digging into.

Score: 9.0 (out of 10)