|
Jun 09 2006
Tony Hawk Underground 2 Remix Review
PSP Game Review | Sports
| Read reviews & Check out new games
|
READ
|
DISCUSS
 Joytron PSP Sli...
 Pelican for Son...
 PSP IVO Sound M...
 DiGi iNVaDeRS
| Go on! You know you want it
| Summary: High fun factor, retarded tutorial
84
Like a few others here, I hadn't played a Tony Hawk game since THPS2. I honestly couldn't even remember the controls on starting this up, and this lead to my first frustration...
I got the game used (no manual), and the tutorial is annoying and retarded. When it tells you to do a No Comply, it says to hit up + x. The + sign means something different here than up + up + x, which is used for the next move, a Boneless. Fine. No big deal. Later, you have to get off your board and jump to a platform in the middle of the water (Wait... I just said "platform" in a TH review... hmmm). You start at the top of another platform, and are told to double jump and hit are to grab the edge. Well, I couldn't get that to work (Maybe it's just me). In fact, the only way I could make it to the platform was to run to the QP on the other side of the water and jump from over there. Irritating!
But first, you should know that the analog stick controls the camera when you're skating, and makes you run when you're on foot. This means that the one time camera control would be really useful, it's a completely different and unnecessary function (x still makes you run... If there's another button to control the camera while off the board, please PM me).
Once you get to the ledge in the water and up to the top, you're supposed to do an Acid Drop into the pool below. The instructions are to skate to the edge, ollie, and hit are to acid drop. In actuality, you just skate to the edge and hit R. If you jump, you will pull off the trick, but it transports you back to the top and wipes you out for no apparent reason. Other problems include lack of explanation of what a trick actually is. Being a skater, I had no problem pulling off spine and hip transfers, but the game definitely doesn't make it obvious.
Finding characters to tell you what to do is annoying. I thought I had finished the tutorial the first time I played through, but it turned out I wasn't even close to done. Lastly, another control issue: focus mode is too easy to turn on accidentally when you do a manual (up + down)... The analog stick is somewhat misused in this game. OK, done with the tutorial... sorry to rant.
I love this game. An hour after the tutorial, I was tearing it up in Santa Cruz and absolutely having a blast. You can switch to your Pro Skater friend (or other characters...) mid-level, slap custom stickers everywhere, skitch cars, and smear the ridiculously cool levels with blood. The missions are inventive, the tricks are wicked looking, and the combination of platforming, RPG elements (stats/leveling and character switching), and running/skating around like an idiot is awesome.
Load times really aren't bad, since there's at least a progress bar to let you know that it's doing something, and these are big levels with lots of detail and random stuff. The initial startup time of the game is a bit long, but that's ok... What bothers me is the Yes/No question when saving. The PSP firmware does this automatically whenever writing to the memory stick, so leaving this extra screen in is lazy or stupid (take your pick) on the part of the developer.
Occasionally there are some audio glitches, but the soundtrack is varied and really cool (I'm leaving all of the tracks on for the moment). There are some visual problems at times, as others have mentioned, but definitely not too often. I'm amazed at how well this works on a handheld, despite its problems.
When you finally pull off a huge vert lip trick, drop back down with a grab/kick, revert, manual, hit are a bunch to spin around, grind, flip, grind, grind, grind (keep jumping and tricking to build up speed), jump off your board, caveman into a pool, revert, manual, turn on focus, boneless out of the pool and pull off a big trick and land it, you really feel like you've accomplished something (and probably gotten a million points on one trick)... And you can keep going like that pretty close to forever. THUG2R has the biggest "fun factor" of any game i've played on PSP, and I would recommend this game to anyone who's willing to put up with a few wonky control/audio/visual issues and a really frustrating tutorial. Grade: B
REVIEW IT
PRODUCT INFO
BUY IT
| |
Comments
for some reason it "corrected" 'R' to "are" in a couple places... so if there are any "are"s that don't make sense... read as "the R button"
+
i figure this will be the game i keep coming back to after i can't beat any more of wipEout and i'm finished with Daxter. i just wish the tutorial was written in a more logical way. i forgot to mention that i love the opening video where you get picked last lol
+
I got it with my psp last year (15th april)
+
what is ur biggest combos, mine is somewhere in the 350,000s
+
Billy said: "what is ur biggest combos, mine is somewhere in the 350,000s"
That's it, man I've gotten past 1000000.
+
so i got really frustrated with this game and traded it for Race Driver 2006. i still think THUG2R is a great game; i just suck at it. so far i give Race Driver an 87 (lower fun factor, but the realism, graphics, and feel of the game are awesome... and it doesn't have Jackass characters)... i'll write a review after i beat a decent percentage of it.
+
register / login
|
PSP411 | Top
PSP411.com is not an official site affiliated with Sony in any way.
Content and graphics Copyright 2004-2008 PSP411.com
All rights reserved. | Contact | RSS
|
7
