Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Preview

Tony Hawk... I wonder if there is a more famous skateboard slacker in the world? The man who's name is associated with this board on wheels as the name of Pamela Anderson is associated with... Er... two blue eyes, or our fellow editor Bunny's name with laced lingerie and dirty thoughts which include teenage girls. Almost all skateboard magz represent, in some way or another daily, reports from Tony's life, and that has been going on for some time now (years, in fact). When a skate movie came out, called "Thrashin' ", the main man in the movie was called Tommy Hook. Coincidence? Go figure... Oh yeah, the chief stuntman in this movie was "the real" Hawk. To put it plain- the man's a legend.

So, they talked him into backing up a sequel of this arcade-sport game that achieved considerable success on the PSX platform. To my great disappointment, I never got to play it on PC, but I have luck to have such friends who are so into Playstation. Watching them play, and then watch them walk funny down the street, casing staircases and railings, gave me the picture of why they and other console players experience this game as the light of their life (read any review related to this game on the Net, and you will know what I'm talking about). By the way, we are talking about the game which is still in the top 10 most sold in the world. Tony Hawk Pro Skater managed to set standards in this saturated genre, and the sequel should push the limit. Since we, PC fans don't know what these standards are, we'll take their word for it.

Let me just say that this action will be tracked by fast and aggressive music: Bad Religion, Rage Against the Machine, Anthrax/Chuck D, Dub Pistols, Fu Manchu, Papa Roach, Naughty by Nature, Powerman 5000, Lagwagon, Millencolin, Swingin' Utters, The High & Mighty, Alley Life featuring Black Planet, Styles of Beyond and Consumed.

Now for those of you that checked out the original, let it be known that there are new tricks and combo's--there are new grabs, grinds, inverts, lips and nollie tricks. For those of you that didn't, let me just say that tricks, jumps and other neck-arm-leg breaking stunts can be performed on any given object, and for every real-world location there will be a lot of interactive objects (garbage cans, cars, busses, boxes..), big secret areas, short cuts and ramp. The levels are twice as large then in the original (and you are probably cursing me for going back to the original, the one on Playstation, that you haven't played, but I can draw references easier that way). You can expect to see locations such as Marseille, Rio de Janeiro, Philadelphia, New York, Ventura Skate Street (the 29ooo foot skate park), the school in South Carolina, Tadzikhistan and Mexico. Activision tends not to enable all the courses at the beginning of the game. Instead, some of them have to be unlocked. I don't know about you guys, but I'm itching to do a Grind, Ollie 540 or a Big Indy...

A Skatepark 3D real-time editor will be available with the game which enables the players to create their own skate parks, and in the same time allowing them to see how it looks in 3D. The obstacles can be, with skilled combining stacked up to 60 feet in height, which won't make your friends happy when they want to ride a custom-made course in multi player mode. Of course, you wont be so wicked (yeah, right), so you will e-mail them your mad courses so they can practice a little, because the created parks take up very little disc space. You will have at your disposal almost 100 objects (halfpipes, qarterpipes, trees, spines, taxis, rails, wood...) which can be placed on the ground in several positions, and rotated around the vertical axis up to 90 degrees.

The characters can be customized thanks to the editor. To start with, you have 13 of them, so apart from Tony, you can watch stunts done by, for example, Steve Callabero, Ellisa Steamer, Chad Muska, Eric Koston or Rodney Mullen, and apart from name, sex, clothes, head, torso and shoes, you can configure a whole lot more to your skaters. So, after basic info on the skater (age, weight, overall concentration...) you can enter the primary psy/phy characteristics. It wont be the skateboard that will determine exclusively the skill, but also the features for every character: Air, Ollie, Speed, Hang Time, Landing, Spin, Invert...

One of the biggest differences between PC and PSX version is the multi player. The two-player split-screen games in "net" version of Sony can be played in real multi-player on the PC, over the LAN or Internet up to 8 players. Of all the game modes in the original, the improved H-O-R-S-E mode, two new disciplines have been added: Tag and Judge Skate Competition. Tag sounds interesting, since one player is chasing the other--but performing tricks. Depending on how good he does tricks, he will slow the opponent down. When he catches him, the roles change. Check out the Graffiti Mode in which the obstacles change colour after you performed a trick over them. Only by doing a better jump over the obstacle, the opponent will change it's colour thereby claiming it.

As far as the career mode, it is a little different than the original. In the original, you raced for tapes, in the new one, you race for money, but it boils down to the same thing. By winning money you can use it to buy new skateboard, tricks (enhancing the trick-set) and upgrading the performances of the character. Don't forget that the money can be found on the course, especially in secluded spots! Taking into consideration that the predefined trick-sets are impressive, the developers are hoping that, after the player finishes the career mode in the character of one of the professionals, he will customize his own character and start building a career, and that, my friends, is a challenge. For those who are doing well, a few new mini-games are prepared, and thanks to replay mode in the end you can summarize the highlights of each run.

And lets not forget the Free Skate Mode - a relaxed ride without the concern of how many tricks you made, and no clock to beat, and a few other options...

And in the end-there's no reason not to expect an interesting skateboard simulation on our PCs, BUT ONLY if the guys from Neversoft provide a quality port for this game. No need to worry about the PSX version, because every thing that the players complained about has been corrected, and even more so. But if there is anything that will cause the game to receive bad reviews or to be poorly accepted by players, then it would be the porting. If I hate to see something on my computer, than it is stupid ported games... Remember Croc 2?