7. Tony Hawk’s Underground 2
In the first Underground, you could feel some of the more wacky, weird, and Jackass-ish elements of skater culture starting to poke through to the surface. Underground 2 rips the cover off entirely and pushes all of that stuff to the front, resulting in a game that feels incredibly dated in 2020. And honestly, I didn’t care much for it back when it first came out. I liked (and still enjoy) Jackass. But THUG2 goes overboard including stunts, pranks, and Jackass-adjacent folks.
The Tony Hawk games have never been obsessed with being realistic or grounded; you can skate around Area 51 in the original game. But they did at least balance the absurd and the skating. THUG2 doesn’t. It just goes all out and ends up being more of a mess that only plays well thanks to the THUG engine and gameplay it is built on.
