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TONY HAWK'S PRO SKATER 2 (GBA)
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Now you can play Hawk in the toilet...
By WILLIAM BARKER
Imagine a land where work isn't work, school isn't school and where chores
consist of eating chocolate mousse and checking the GameBlitz back-end
for erroneous data parsing.
Ooh yes, this is
the land of the new GameBoy Advance.
Sure, I'm sitting
here, supposedly writing a review, but little does my superior know I
have a 32-bit powerhouse lodged in my pocket. Oh, and a GameBoy Advance.
Yes, we got our GameBoy Advance and, golly-gee, it's the dogs bollox (translation:
it's good).
The only quibble
I have with Nintendo is that it failed to include a backlight, which is
very important for high-res colour LCD screens. Alternatively,
the devices would have probably cost more to manufacture as a result of
the inclusion of a backlight, so the idea of an addon makes sense, too.
We received a whole stack of GBA games, but the first one we played was
Tony Hawk 2. The GameBlitz crew has always been a fan of after work Horse
contests (in the context of Tony Hawk - please don't confuse our writers,
they are very fragile…) and when we learned that we could be playing an
exciting skateboarding game whilst in the midst of traffic, suffocating
in the confines of the toilets or even when at particularly boring movies,
we were captivated.
 So play the game
we did, chewing through thousands of AA batteries and chocolate thick
shakes. The conclusion? Tony Hawk 2 GBA is very, very good. So good, in
fact, that the only key gripe we had with it was the omission of multiplayer
link-up games.
Part of what makes this game so addictive and fun is the control system.
It's just like other Tony Hawk games, where there are four action buttons
(ollie, grind, grab, kickflip) and with these thousands of different tricks
are possible. But none of this would be fun if the game weren't represented
in two and a half dimensions.
By this, the skaters have been modeled as 3D polygon entities. They can
be viewed from any angle, spun, rotated and sautéed. The levels are a
different story, however, comprised of static 2D, multi-tiered skate parks.
This works fantastically well, as the skaters can perform almost every
single move from the PSX version of Tony 2.
Dark slides, manuals, crooked grinds, finger-flips and more can all be
whipped out with the click of a button. With enough money, players can
also purchase new stats, for better speed and longer hang time, plus they
can also acquire new special moves.
Speaking of which, when you perform a special move, the camera zooms in
and you see a slightly pixellated skater wiggling about most passionately.
It's very cool.
 Speaking of all
things cool, the replays are absolutely spectacular. If you watch them
normally, they look exactly like they do during the main game, but Vicarious
Visions decided to include a slow-mo button. Press the 'R' trigger and
you can watch your session in slow motion or even frame by frame. Truly,
this is one of the funkiest handheld games ever.
The graphics in Tony Hawk 2 are best described as smooth, with 30fps gameplay,
a gourad-shaded polygon skater (perhaps anti-aliasing is a little way
off…) and quite large, fully interactive environments. There are bails,
there's blood, there's awesome-looking sparks during hellish grinds and
there's plenty of fun to had.
What it all boils down to is gameplay and, together with the innovative
take on 2D environments and 3D characters, plus the much-loved gameplay,
the result is a very worthy title. Testament to its great gameplay, we've
been playing this game way too much and just in case you were wondering
- the best place to play Tony Hawk 2 is at the supermarket. The lighting
is just perfect!
ORIGINALITY 90%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 90%
PLAYABILITY 90%
ADDICTION 95%
ENJOYMENT 95%
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