An extremely well-built game, pretty much flawless. Best Tony Hawk game to date.
Story
The story starts you out as your custom skateboarder , with your life-long best friend, Eric Sparrow. You two try to make it big in your neighbourhood, on skateboards. You start in in New Jersey, your hometown, and eventually you are driven out by drug-dealers trying to hurt you.
The rest is extremely non-repetitive, the funnest part of the game is that you can join actual skatboarding companies such as Birdhouse, Element, Flip, Girl, and Zero.
You will find a lot of twists and unexpected turns in the plot that should keep you entertained.
The problem is that the story can be played at one sitting for the ultra-hardcore-long playing gamer. If you keep doing mission all the time without freeskating, you can easily beat the game in 3-5 hours.
Even though the single player is very short, it has a lot of replay value, which could bring you back to beat it several times.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Tony Hawk's games has always been simple, yet complex...it's hard to explain, and vets of the Tony Hawk's franchise should know what I mean. THUG is a very easy game to pick up. You should be able to do lip stalls, grinds, huge ollies, flips, holds, manuals and more in less than 20 minutes.
The beginning of the story is a bit of a tutorial, but it doesn't show, giving the game very good support, and a less complex feel to it.
There are so many modes of missions that have so much variety that you should be quite busy.
You can also go into some cars, usually one per level and drive around. While the driving physics are awful, it is a nice break from skateboarding once in a very long while, and some missions are done with cars which adds to the non-repetitive gameplay.
This year, Neversoft lets us get off of our boards and on our feet, whenever we want. It would be different to go back and play the older Tony Hawk games, as you would be mashing the black button to get off your board. The ability to get off your board opens up a wide new world of exploration, as you can find secret areas much easir and get to places you would not be able to on a board.
Graphics
The graphics of this game are pretty average, nothing wow, but nothing that will make you think PS1. The textures fit very nicely together and the people obviously worked hard on the character design.
While some of the animations on the outside world such as cars, and construction workers, little things like that, aren't the greatest, some things you see are really humorous and you should always be content with what you're seeing.
Sound
The sound for THUG is far beyond what you would expect from a video game. The sound effects are okay, but where the audio really shines is in the soundtrack.
Not only can you have custom sountracks from your Xbox hard-drive, but also the game already provides a HUGE library of music, from Rock to Punk, Hip Hop to Rap, this game has something for everyone, with easily around 100 tracks. The songs aren't bad either from some unknown bands, and a few known ones. Some of the bands include: NOFX, In Flames, and other bands.
Overall THUG is definately a great game, it's levels are so diverse, and ghetto, and cozy that you will want to come back over and over again. This is a must-buy for anyone with an Xbox. Anyone.
Whiskertugger10