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T.H.U.G. - Male or Male

December 13, 2003 By Glenn Turner
You - male or male. Whoop de fricking do.

T.H.U.G. is my first experience with the Tony Hawk franchise. Yeah, scold me if you want - I don't really care all that much for extreme sports games. However, I did really dig Aggressive Inline and while I find T.H.U.G. to be horribly inferior to it ... well, that's another article. What I'm really writing about is how oddly disconcerting the script is about it's character creation and integrating that with the actual game.

So let me start like this: Most of the pre-made male characters in T.H.U.G. suck. They look like something peeled off the sidewalk after left frying in butter for about 15 minutes. Or maybe they're just rejects from a Troma film - either way, I was having none of that. I took one of the pre-made female characters, tweaked some tattoos, added some bands and BAM there was my character. And wow, they even hired a female voice actress for her! Now see, for the first third of the game everything was actually pretty fine and normal. I turned AM or FM or whatever they call it and received the chance to chose my team by watching a series of videos. One video had an especially tech-ed out appearance with the boards being matted out and some damn cool effects and even better, it was The Girl skateboard company! So, yeah - what better place for me head to, right? After customizing my new board (pink and black, just like an old website) I formed a little story in my head about these punk-ass young ladies forming a skating co-op to show up the assholes that ran the blocks like bullies and then it turned into some--- wait the loading screen finished. Oh, my manager is some sleazy baldy 40 year old. Sigh, obviously they have horrible taste but I'm willing to accept him in a 'oh he's an ass but he means well despite all the assgrabbing' Charlie's Angels way... I mean really, haven't we all been there?

So anyways ... I'm quite psyched about being an AM or FM or whatever they call me, and thinking that the end is near and everything but no according to the bossman I'm still a newbie and need to wrangle a party. And then I talk to this other guy who says I need to wrangle chicks by getting in a cart full of what appear to be posies, as in the flower. I would say 'What am I - chopped liver?' and pout just like in the movies, but no the timer just keeps ticking away. So I find these chicks, who are marked with green fists and after I perform 'tricks' and 'combos' for them they start fawning over me. Tampa is a pretty liberal city I suppose. Either way, I intrigue them with my stunts and get them in my posie-mobile and bring them to the party, get drunk and pass out in a fountain. Go me! I head over to Hawaii with a hangover and end up getting wrangled into trying to impress 'bikini chicks' with my 'phat sk8' abilities. They want me to rub oil on their backs, and if Kai from Queer Eye has taught me anything they're not asking out of platonic gratitude!

Simply put, whoever wrote the script for this game certainly didn't take into consideration the grand design. And by that, I mean the ability to toggle between two genders instead of one. They, he and/or she had to just completely ignore the fact that you could actually play this game as a woman. Sure, give me whatever excuse you want - your character a tranvestite who is going through a midlife gender crisis all over again or whatever schlock and I still won't believe you - the story in this game is crap. My motivation is to lure 'honeys' by skating around in empty swimming pools in Hawaii?? Sorry, I quit. Turning pro isn't worth this whoring out. I'll skate in my backyard or on my Dreamcast, thank you very much.

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