Old people tend to complain about skaters no end and now I've said that you'll probably notice it a lot more. I was in town the other day when I overheard an old pensioner talking about this very subject. Now, for the record, I'm not the type of person who eavesdrops but for some reason people over a certain age seem to talk ten times louder, so it would be rude not to hear them. Wouldn't it? Its certainly hard not to overhear, that's for sure. "These young skaters will be the death of me."

I'm a person who likes to chat; I am a very sociable guy. Without a second thought I jumped into the conversation, because I knew this old dear might hold some valuable information that I could include in this very review. She seemed likeable enough and I could sympathise with a lot of her points. "They're always zooming past my house at sixty miles an hour," although I didn't feel like explaining the physics to her and proving that this is physically impossible. The guy she was shouting at before was probably somebody else who was doing a Tony Hawk's Underground 2 review and as soon as she got talking to me, this guy ran off! My only chance of escape would either be to point and run or wait for another Tony Hawk's reviewer to come along…

But I persevered. "They use my wall to grind on" and "they make lots of noise when I'm watching Coronation Street" are just a few of the things I can recall. "These skaters will have me six feet underground before my time!" she continued. "They are all a bunch of thugs!" Her use of the words "underground" and "thug" caught my attention. Something strange was going on here…

Then she started to laugh hysterically. The wrinkles on her face tightened, her cardigan turned into a fashionable poncho, her slippers transformed into fat skating shoes and a skateboard appeared from nowhere. She jumped on it and rode off into the distance at approximately sixty miles an hour! For some reason a cold wind had rustled itself up and it was dark, yet I could have sworn that it was light a moment before. Just then a beggar in the corner asked if I could spare any change and I gave him my wallet, which was full of twenty pound notes - something was terribly wrong! "Dex…" I could hear somebody calling my name. "Dexter!" the sound of my name got louder. "Dexter wake up now, you lazy lump!" It then became apparent that I was dreaming, thankfully. Bet you weren't expecting that when you started reading, were you?

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 has some new unusual features that none of you will be expecting as well. It's everything you ever wanted from the last couple of Hawk incarnations but these are things that were never included; a unique bobby dazzler of a story and loads of depth that promises to wow us all. Including you and possibly even your granny!

As with most Tony Hawk's games, you'll start by making a character, the one that will appear in the fantastic story that we are about to get onto. The character creator is fantastic; I couldn't get enough of it. Pick a face, hairstyle, skin colour, hair colour, and other facial attributes and you can get onto customising the rest of the body. You can create any skin colour using three sliding bars, mixing colours to get the desired shade. I created a hard faced pub-crawler with green skin, a white samurai hairstyle and, to top it all off, adorned with a pirate's eye patch. Ahoy! Then I was onto customising the body and I'm not exaggerating when I say that there are hundreds of objects under each category - the only problem here is that you're spoilt for choice! It must have taken me a good portion of an hour to decide on what to wear. Does my bum look big in this? I even tried on bull suit, which looked like on of those outfits from a fairground - it wasn't to my taste though!

After I'd finished deciding on what clothes to wear, I ended up with a green alien pirate wearing a piece of robot's armour, boxer shorts, boxing gloves, high socks and trendy shoes. I even put a parrot on my shoulder to finish it all off and the possibilities for different combinations of clothing and accessories are endless. Looking as ridiculous as I was going to manage, I watched the full motion video that sets the first level up nicely and this is the first thing you won't be expecting - it starts off like a horror film! I don't want to spoil a thing here though, because it's superb! What I can tell you is that there are two teams of competing skaters and you've been placed in one of them. You're the newbie of the team and if you pick an alien, you're the only extra-terrestrial too! The first level is all about training, teaching you all the basics if you've never played a Hawk game before and it covers the large host of new features too. As I said earlier, you would have never expected these new features to be present in Tony Hawk's, because we were near perfection in the last. But as my strict English teacher use to say; "there's always room for improvement, laddy!" I am beginning to think he was right. First of all, one of the most unusual features of the game is the ability to be able to pick various objects up and throw them at people! I picked up ten tomatoes and threw them at fellow skaters in my team; it was very funny! You can even combine throwing objects into your combos!! How about using your balance skills to perform a manual, while throwing tomatoes, carnival style? It all makes up for some serious points.

If that novelty was the only thing here then I'd be pleased but there's plenty more where that came from! Perhaps one of my most cherished features is the ability to be able to get off your board, walk up to a wall and spray graffiti on it. You can make your own logos and paint them around the levels, which is a lot of fun. It also gives a lot of depth for the game and the "mark your territory" missions are always fun, reminding me of one of my favourite blast from the pasts, Jet Set Radio. You can also add graffiti into a combo to rack up the points, for example grinding, jumping off your board, quickly spraying your name and jumping back on your board and back into a grind.

Something else that's similar to graffiti is the sticker system. You can choose from hundreds of stickers at the main menu when you're customising your character, or in my case, my Alien Pirate. Choose from sponsors to well known skating logos and even weird shapes and icons. I'm actually surprised to see how many sponsors they have crammed into this game - there're dozens of logos on the stickers, including Napster - and there are lots of clothing logos too. There are even well known vehicles driving around the towns that are easy recognisable and if you get close you can see the manufacturer's logo on them. For example, there's a soft-top Red Wrangler Jeep cruising the streets that you can grab hold of and hitch a ride from!

The sponsors give a familiar feel to the game; it's nice to be able to point at a Napster sticker you've just slapped upon a museum wall! The stickers play a big part in racking up combos, because you can slap stickers on walls whilst you're on your board; just jump towards a wall and press jump again to slap on a sticker, then jump off the wall, doubling back on yourself. If you use your noggin, you should be able to dream up the possibilities already. And don't even get me started about the amount of stuff you can now smash up, something I'm sure will appeal to fans and newcomers alike [I know it does to me! Ed]

Another smaller feature that I like are some of the new moves you can pull off! It might sound trivial but I love the fact that you can do back flips and forward rolls, which can rack up serious points and they feel so nice to execute. Another great move is performing 360-degree spins on fire hydrants, which is another great way of getting points. It's quite a hard move to pull off but it looks hilarious; I feel sorry for my pirate though, he must be dizzy after twenty seconds of spinning! Possibly the finest move and probably the easiest to pull is the freak-out. When you land on your head or fall on the floor, losing all the points that you nearly had; a freak-out meter comes up. Tapping the grind button as hard and as fast as you can fills the meter up and the higher you get the meter before your character stands up the more frustrated he or she becomes, which means that a freak-out is coming! Depending on how high the meter is, your character may jump on the board and break it, throw it to the other side of the level or even head butt it until it snaps. These moves give you quite a high score too, which gives you a better chance of making a comeback after a devastating fall.

The last skating feature that I should mention has to be the focus. As you probably already know, all the Tony Hawk's games have a Special bar and once you fill it you can pull eye-pleasing moves that score big. In THUG 2 you can still pull off these moves when you bar is full - but you can also focus when you have a full bar too. Focus is like The Matrix on a skateboard! Once you have a full bar, you can go into focus mode and slow everything down. This allows you to think slower, so you can press buttons fast but the response time is slower. Your bar slowly depletes when you're in slow motion but as long as you're in the air or on the rail you'll stay focused. It's my favourite feature by a long way.

Obviously, you should now know at this point of the review, the Story Mode is the main part of the game and it consists of completing extreme objectives to compete against the other team. Objectives include painting the town with your graffiti, searching for secrets and just doing some extreme skating. However, something to break up the missions has been added to Tony Hawk's Underground 2 that should please lots and lots of people.

Before it was just mission after mission but now you can play as up to four characters on one level, each completing a different set of unique objectives. When you're bored of your character or you've completed all of their objectives, why not switch to the guest character or a pro skater and complete missions with them instead? The guest character doesn't ride a skateboard though; it's normally something comical to break up the skating gameplay. I won't say too much but the first level lets you drive a two-wheeled, petrol-powered scooter! It certainly makes a great change.

Something fans have been longing for since Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is the short but addictive classic mode, where players have to beat high scores and collect letters. It was the simple-minded gameplay that made Tony Hawk's 2 a classic and now you fans can rejoice, because THUG 2 incorporates the old classic mode with all the new modes intact, to deliver the finest classic mode yet! Old-skoolers will be able to collect the letters S-K-A-T-E, collect the combo letters and find secret tapes until enough objectives are completed to be able to move on - just the way we liked it! I was so happy to see that this mode was included; it really means a lot to me. And with this and the story mode, it's like two games in one!

Multiplayer has always been one of my favourite aspects of the Tony Hawk's series and I was glad to find everything still intact in this respect. Some of my favourites include Horse and the hilarious Fireball! This strange mode was included in the last game but it still deserves a mention; you and a friend skate around and when you've targeted your friend you can hurl a fireball at him, full force! It's like a deathmatch on wheels! Horse is still my favourite though, where you and a friend compete to get a high score - you each get one chance at getting a big score and the person with the least gets awarded a letter of the chosen word, which is "horse" by default but can be changed to whatever you like! The game continues until somebody gets called the full word - it's simple and fun. The only thing that ticks me off is the fact that you can only have two player games; this means you'll have to relinquish your controller if you've got more than one friend! Unforgivably, THUG 2 is not enabled for Xbox Live play, which will upset a lot of Xbox owners, considering that those with the PC and PS2 versions can play with up to 7 other players online. I have no idea why this is but it's a crying shame to be sure.

The other modes on Tony Hawks's menu are the create modes where you can make your own park, skater, graffiti, create your own trick and even make your own goals for you or a friend to take part in! You can lay down the letters S-K-A-T-E, or even create races in goal mode - it's nice to make a hard goal and see your friends struggle! There's also the High Score mode and a classic free skate mode to practice and learn in your own time, at your own pace.

The graphics in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 are very good and the level design is fantastic. Buildings, benches, water, bridges, trees, balconies; the list goes on and everything looks great and can be interacted with in some way or another! You'd expect to see levels as nice as this in games like Spider-Man 2 and even Grand Theft Auto. My favourite level is Barcelona in Spain, because if you've ever been there on holiday you'll notice a lot of similarities! There are even people dressed up as bulls, selling tomatoes to throw! There is the odd bit of slowdown but nothing worth worrying about. The character design is also very good and there's plenty of facial detail when you get close up.

The music is great, and if you cannot find any track on this game to skate to then you are insane! There are rock, punk, alternative, hip-hop and even classical songs to choose from. Music from Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers and plenty more are all here for your listening pleasure. Never fear though! If you don't like certain tracks they can easily be disabled! Sound effects and voiceovers are both realistic and crisp, so with the scene-setting music running alongside it all amounts to some real ear candy. [Note to readers, poking sweets in your ear can cause harm! Ed]

The Tony Hawk's series has never failed to impress me and I always enjoyed each release. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was probably my favourite up to this point but with more modes than you can shake a skateboard at, endless customisations and a great multiplayer, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 has now stolen the trophy. Mix this up with a decent storyline and that wonderful classic mode and you've got yourself a fantastic game. There is more than enough innovation and bags of new features to make this a must have for Tony Hawk's fans, whilst those of you yet to experience the series, or who never saw the appeal, might just find yourself hooked. You never know, you might just get your granny hooked too - she'll be out on her skateboard terrorising those whippersnapper kids in no time!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).