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The first point that should be made, perhaps, is the most obvious: this is not BMX XXX. It's an unfair comparison to make, but we were all thinking it. Tony Hawk's Underground was up and playable at E3 2003, and it looked good and played as well as the Tony Hawk name would seem to signify, but we'd seen something very like it before, and it had driven several of us mad. I don't think anyone who saw Underground did so without a shudder of horrible foreboding, of Tony Hawk pulling off a flying 720 hoopty dance jump kick turnaround special, or whatever the hell death-defying bone-cracking stunt he's managed to do this week, and getting a poorly rendered lap dance as a reward. Looking at the full version, we needn't've worried. Tony Hawk's Underground pairs the Pro Skater gameplay, as has been practiced and proven through four ridiculously popular titles now, with a sort of free-roaming adventure through more than twenty separate chapters. It's very much more of the same, albeit in a slightly different arrangement and with an extraordinarily linear setting.
  
Now, I should make an admission before I go any further. I suck at Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. In my limited experience with the series, I have landed unfortunate skaters in crash positions that the engine theoretically did not allow. That being said, I still had a pretty good time with Underground, even though I should've crippled my boarder about a dozen times. I would like to seriously thank whoever's idea it was to leave a stamina bar out of this thing, because if it were not for him or her, I would have scattered my character's bones across the street like confetti. You begin Underground by customizing the name and appearance of your own skater, picking from a surprising variety of skin tones, faces, shirts, pants, shoes, accessories, and tattoos. You don't have full freedom, obviously, but you can make quite a few different characters with the variety you've been given, anyone from a Joe Average skater-type to, if you really wanted, the Hulk. Hell, stick floating eyes on top of a bloody neck stump and strip your character's arms to the bone; he likes it, less to injure.
  
If you want, it's possible, with the use of the PS2 network adaptor and a digital camera, to take a photo of your own face and upload it to Underground to adorn your character. Then you can stick your head on top of a body packed with tattoos and horrible fashion choices, which is, of course, half the reason to do it. You start the game in New Jersey. Specifically, you're somewhere in the middle of nowhere, caught between gang members on one side of town and drug dealers on the other. The game's "adventure," as it were, begins one fine day when the sky is clear, the crackheads are biting, and Chad Muska is coming to town for a demonstration. To see Muska's demonstration, you'll have to advance the plotline by running around town, picking from a list of goals. If you get most of them done, then you'll move the story forward; these goals, obviously, frequently involve pulling off decent tricks, but also include grabbing your idiot friend Eric's skateboard off of the rooftop where the drug dealers threw it, and sneaking past a bunch of burned-out stoners to reclaim a stolen board, among many, many other things. The more goals you accomplish, the further you'll get to your dream of being sponsored by the local skate shop, and from there, to becoming a professional skateboarder in your own right.
  
For some of these tasks, you can get off your skateboard to run around and try some platforming action on the neighborhood's rooftops. The engine's not really suited for this--you jump by releasing X, not pressing it, which may screw up your timing the first few times you try it--but it's not an unwelcome intrusion. It's funny, for example, in the stolen property mission, to ditch the skateboard and go all tactical stealth for a few minutes, creeping across balconies and rooftops to steal the board back. If you pull off an early goal, involving getting in good with a local gang, you can even borrow one of their cars to motor around town in whenever you like. Sadly, you can't surf the highway in them--yet--but you can roar down the roads, running over obstacles and screwing around on the halfpipes. In a car. The mind boggles.
  
You begin as a pretty green skater, who can be relied upon not to fall off of his or her board, but you're still a little hazy on the basics. Between goals, you can improve your skater's basic statistics by pulling off a variety of tricks, as listed in the Options screen. Grinding a long pipe for four seconds or longer will improve your Grind skill, as will holding a lip trick for a long time or pulling off a 540 turn in midair. Those are just a few examples, but they serve to get the meaning across; the overall effect is that as you improve, so does your character. If you can find them, other skaters are running around, who'll be willing to teach you the button combinations you need to pull off the extra special tricks. (Some of them are famous, which lends the entire thing a sort of weird movie-of-the-week, special-guest-star vibe.) Alternatively, you can just fool around on your board for a while, either as your custom character in story mode, or as one of the pre-existing skaters--Tony Hawk, Elissa Steamer, etc.--in the free-skate mode. Each of the three environments for the game feels and plays like a particularly expansive version of a stage from the previous Pro Skater games, complete with hidden gaps, truly ridiculous tricks to perform, and intricate combos you can string together using whatever's lying around. I'm particularly fond of grinding the power wires in Jersey, just because it's dangerously stupid. In other words, true to form, Pro Skater was never broken, so Neversoft hasn't fixed it.
  
The graphics are pretty standard stuff, on PS2. The character models are inexpressive and slightly stiff, but they move well on a skateboard, and the framerate never drops. That last may be the most impressive part, as this game moves fast. On lower difficulty levels, it's easy enough to get your act together, but you'll need pinpoint timing and reflexes to pull off some of the tricks the game demands. Hell, even on the lowest difficulty, there are a couple of mandatory goals that will seriously test your skills, such as skitching off of a passing car to get enough momentum to ramp off and jump clear over an entire suspension bridge. (Once again, that statement comes with the above disclaimer: I do not have the Tony Hawk skills online. Please do not flood me with "haha n00b" letters. Thank you.) I have to admit that I've shied away from the Pro Skater games until now. Underground does add some appeal to the license for me, though, as it adds a story mode and some actual goals aside from point collecting to what's arguably the single best skateboarding series in video game history. I'd say that if you've been avoiding the Tony Hawk games for similar reasons, Underground might be the game to change your mind. Check back for our full review soon.
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