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PlayStation | Strategy Guide

Strategy Guide: Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 2 High Scoring Tactics (Part 1)

Strategy Guide by cheatmonkey | 07/16/2003 | 13:48:25 PM PST

The "High Scoring Guide" will provide some tips for players who cannot understand why they always lose to their friends during a match.

The "High Scoring Guide" will provide some tips for players who cannot understand why they always lose to their friends during a match. The guide will be divided into 2 categories: Grinds and Vertical Tricks.

The Grinds section will help the player to get into the habit of combining tricks on and off grinds (ex. kick-flip to 5-0, hard-flip off). This section will also help the player to take advantage of the environment in order to perform huge combos and will provide specific environments, stages, and example tricks.

The Vertical Tricks section will provide a list of some of the highest scoring tricks while getting air, and various pointers on how to achieve them.

When you want to score high points in less time, the only solution is combos. And while busting many short combos will rack up the points, landing a single longer combo will score even higher.

Vertical Combos
To get any high points at all, you simply must get your spins down. Spinning greatly adds to your score. Multidirectional grabs and flips (like down + left + circle) get more points than single directional, and they're really not that hard to land. Remember to keep an eye on the skater's body rather than the board when you're pulling something like the judo. The madonna is perhaps the trickiest to land after spinning - make sure the skater's chest or back is facing towards the ground before you release the grab to land.

If you have a skater with mad air like Tony himself, you can start the jump with a flip, grab and spin with at least 540 degrees, and flip again before you land. The easiest way to do this, of course, is to use the same multidirectional press for all flips, grabs and spins. For example: Jump + Flip + LEFT + DOWN (and while holding down the direction), Grab (if you're still holding the direction, you'll start to spin), wait till you hit 360 or 540 and then flip again to land. If your starting flip is a slow flip (like a kickflip to an indy) then try landing with a varial or a 360 kickflip instead. They're faster and rack up more points than a regular heel or kickflip. Make sure you have enough speed before you bust your next combo.

If you use a street skater like Caballero or Muska, forget about triple hit combos because you're going to have to do a weak grab in order to complete the last flip. Besides, a flip and a grab to 360 or 540 does more damage, so just stick to that.

Grind Combos
Grind combos are hard to maintain and difficult to aim for, which is why they give you way more points if you land one. In almost every stage in the game, there's at least one area where you can bust a major grind combo. The main rule is: if your wheels haven't touched the ground yet, you're still linking tricks. So try to stay off the ground as long as possible when you're going from grind to grind.

The first thing you should practice is grinding from the start of an edge to the end, curves and all. Focus on increasing your skill in maintaining your balance in a grind. Next, work on consistently jumping from one grind to another whether side to side or across a gap. If you're jumping from side to side, hold the direction you want to jump towards on the D pad before you release and you'll ollie in that direction. If you're jumping straight forward over a gap, then simply hit jump without touching any direction.

The next method you want to practice is flipping from grind to grind (which is essential to high scoring). You can bust varial flips and 360 kickflips on straight gaps and side to side jumps, but if you're jumping to a higher plane, then it's safer to use normal heel or kickflips.