Tony Hawk's Underground

The most telling thing about this game is the moment you hop off the board. Earlier entries in the series kept you glued to a deck for two minutes at a time. Here you can walk, climb, grab a ledge, and commandeer a vehicle to reach a rooftop gap you could not otherwise touch. It sounds minor now. In 2003 it changed what a skating level could be, because the space between spots finally had a use.

The other big swing was the character. Instead of picking a pro, you build your own skater, put your face on them through the game's creation tools, and follow a loose story of rising from nobody to somebody with a crew and a rivalry. The writing is brash and thin, and the cutscenes lean on the sort of humor that has not aged kindly. But the premise suited the series. Tony Hawk had always been about the culture around the tricks, and this was the first entry to put the player inside it rather than watching from the pro roster.

Underneath, the core remains the Neversoft trick engine: ollies, grinds, manuals, and the combo chains that tie them together. The addition of the Natas spin, which lets you pivot on certain objects, and the ability to flip between board tricks and on-foot movement, gave combo-builders fresh ways to extend a line. Goals tend to be a mix of scoring targets, collecting items, and small errands, and some of the errands are tedious. Driving in particular is serviceable at best, a means of getting somewhere rather than a pleasure.

Played today, the loose, jokey structure still goes down easily, and the level design has real invention in its best stretches. The mission quality is uneven, and the camera can fight you when you are on foot. Even so, it stands as the point where the series stopped being only a score attack and started to feel like a place. That ambition, rough edges included, is what makes it worth revisiting.