Tony Hawk's Underground 2

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 built on its successful predecessor and further deepened the emphasis on story, humor, and cooperation with the player's buddy, with whom they went through a series of absurd missions across several world destinations. The new World Destruction Tour mode parodied competitive circuits and let players sabotage opponents as well as complete comically exaggerated tasks outside classic skateboarding disciplines and fair-play rules, with the game openly embracing its own exaggeration and departure from realism. The trick system was further expanded, giving players even greater control over move combinations and their smooth linking into long, flashy sequences.

On Xbox, the game benefited visually from colorful and varied locations, from desert cities to European metropolises full of historic architecture, while the technical presentation remained on par with the previous entry in the series. A character, trick, and custom level editor gave players plenty of room for creativity and extended the game's lifespan well beyond the campaign alone, since the community could share their creations further. A humorous tone and exaggeration set Underground 2 apart from more seriously toned competitors and became one of its main hallmarks.

Underground 2 was well received, though some reviewers saw it as less groundbreaking than its predecessor, more of an extension and fine-tuning of the existing mechanics. Still, it retained a strong fan base thanks to its humor and the variety of content on offer, as well as the number of hidden references to previous entries in the series. Today, the game serves as a nostalgic reminder of the era when the Tony Hawk series experimented with story and an open world, before later returning to simpler professional tours without an overblown plot and with an emphasis on pure gameplay, free of unnecessary detours from the skateboarding itself.

Why play it: For fans of humor, hidden references to previous entries, and varied content, even though it's more a fine-tuning of the first Underground than a fundamental step forward.