December 18-24, 2003

naked city

Tony Hawk Down?

The daily grind: You just want to play all day, but THUG wants you to do your chores.

The millionaire/ spokesman/pro skater tries to go underground.

by Patrick Rapa

How come nobody ever calls Tony Hawk a sellout? I’m not saying he is, I’m just saying. Seems like everybody else who reaches some kind of lofty plateau in his or her field ends up getting called a sellout by the people who liked him way back when. Success is always corrupting people. Turning them into divas or making them forget their roots or the little people or whatever. That’s what they say about Liz Phair and Metallica and Howard Dean, right?

Why isn't anybody saying it about a pretty boy who went from grinding the curbs of Carlsbad, Calif., to making millions by putting his name on a bunch of video games and his face in commercials for Hershey's chocolate milk, Apple Computers, Bagel Bites and Mountain Dew?

Well, for one thing, that's the American Dream and once in a while Americans will generously accept that it came true for somebody. Also, he is apparently a very good skater. One of the best, according to people who know. He is, in his own way, pretty charitable too, helping set up skateboard parks in needy communities. And he hasn't started wearing furs or killing bums or anything like that. So, for the moment, Hawk remains untouchable. But we, the uncaring masses, must remain vigilant. One day he will slip and we will be ready to dismiss the man as the sellout we always supposed he'd become. It is with this eye for failure that we should scrutinize the new Tony Hawk's Underground (Activision, Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube, $49.99).

Never mind that "underground" is one word, they want us to call the game "THUG." Fine. That fits the mood: The characters in it often find themselves feuding with drug dealers, allying themselves with drag racers and jumping over cops. It's fantasy, but not purely so. After all, in the real world, there's always somebody somewhere who wants to make skateboarding illegal.

Where the other entries in the popular series were about doing tricks to unlock more levels (to do more tricks, to unlock more boards, etc.), THUG has a sort-of plot. Perform little tasks and tricks to unlock levels on your way toward a career as a professional skater. Eventually you've got sweet, big-money endorsement deals and you're doing a spine transfer in Vancouver, Moscow or some mythical skater Valhalla called Slam City, and some video game critic is wondering if you're a sellout.

But before you get started (in the lowly New Jersey suburbs level), you have to design your character. Thanks to the numerous hair, body, color and clothes options, there are millions of fashion and physical possibilities. You can make a tall purple chick with puffy green hair, an eye patch, enormous calves, designer sneakers and a big Vans tattoo on her back. The point is you can come close to designing a character that at least rudimentarily resembles yourself.

Which makes it all the more painful when you get hit by a truck or bail on a trick and scrape both knees down a concrete incline. This concept of creating a skateboarding doppelganger says a lot about the appeal of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games: They're just as appealing to the George McFlys who couldn't ever actually skate for real as they are to the Martys who can. Whether you're a skate nerd or not, these games are the only places you can ollie off a roof and grind a telephone wire. In the real world you would die, probably right away.

There is much about THUG to embrace: The graphics are sweet and the injuries are realistically portrayed, except that you survive them. The soundtrack -- 70 songs by the likes of Jurassic 5, Queens of the Stone Age and Jane's Addiction -- is appropriately adrenaline-pumping. The two-player mode, wherein your skateboard shoots fireballs at your opponent, is fun once you figure it out.

In some ways, THUG allows you more freedoms than the previous Hawks. You can climb some buildings, drive a car (and a leafblower) or tuck your board under your arm and run around awkwardly. But instead of earning points by doing whatever creative little trick you could think of (like the old days), gameplay is often advanced only if you do specific tricks. Which means all that freedom has come at a terrible price.

For example: In the Manhattan level, you skate up to the possibly-famous-to-somebody pro skater Chad Muska who tells you to do a trick called a "moonwalk" along some wires over a river. Then the game instructs you on how to do it: Press a series of directional buttons and the button with the little circle on it.

Now, it looks dangerous, but you want to get in good with Chad, so you try it. And keep trying it. Wait, do you press all the buttons at once? Or in a row? The game is unclear. Nothing seems to work. The old games were about figuring out how to do the difficult tricks. On this trick -- and throughout THUG -- we know exactly what to do but can't seem to do it. Maybe if I had another thumb? After a half-hour (or approximately 60 drownings), you want to sneak into Tony Hawk's mansion and spit on his Bagel Bites, the fuckin' sellout.