Tony Hawk's American Wasteland Review

The Tony Hawk games have been on a downward trend ever since THUG came out. They aren’t bad, not by any means, but THUG 1 and 2 and now Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland definitely lack that magic that the four Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles had. The gameplay in THAW is just as good as it always has been, but the new levels are only so-so and the story mode is pretty much terrible. Xbox Live play makes the game worth checking out, but the overall package could have been better.

Gameplay

So what is new as far as gameplay goes in THAW? Not anything as big and as important as the manual or revert, but there are some new tricks in here. You can now bert slide, which is a ground-based maneuver that looks every bit like “sidewalk surfing”. There are also now some new running and acrobatic tricks you can use to climb walls and get to those hard to reach places. All of the rest of the moves that we have accumulated through the series play vital roles in getting the most out of the gameplay and everything is as smooth and the controls are as solid as ever.

Brand new to THAW is that you can now hop on a BMX bike and ride around and do tricks. You can’t use bikes online, which is a bummer, but they do definitely make the single player more interesting. And, surprisingly, the bike controls and everything are actually better implemented here than they were for the Mat Hoffman Pro BMX games.

Story Mode

The story mode in THAW follows your custom created skater as they move to Los Angeles with dreams of skating where the sport began. You get robbed three seconds after getting off of the bus, however, and thus your grand skate adventure begins. You’ll make new friends and do a lot of crazy stuff around LA and the story is actually pretty good overall. It does a much better job of working you into the skate scene than THUG 1 or 2 did. There is a problem, however. When you first start you literally know nothing and have to relearn all of the moves veteran THPS players have been using for the last six years. Teaching your new dog old tricks makes up a majority of what goes on in story mode, but other goals (such as grinding certain objects) are completely ruined by the fact that you are plopped right down in front of them and don’t have to actually figure anything out on your own. The game holds your hand the entire time and it is just really, really lame. The only real reason to bother playing it is to open up the levels so you can play them online.

Classic Mode

Classic mode makes a return, but there isn’t nearly enough here to turn the experience around the same way it did in THUG2. The two minute timer and classic goals such as collecting S-K-A-T-E are back and I love them, but the problem is that there are only six levels in classic mode. There are some decent levels, including some from THPS 1, but there just isn’t enough of them. You can breeze through classic mode in about an hour if you know what you are doing which is pretty disappointing. I’m going to take a stand here and say that I really miss the smaller levels, the two minute timer, and more interesting goals of the THPS games. The game just seemed more focused and the gameplay was a whole lot more satisfying back then.

One Huge Level? Not Quite ...

One of the big selling points of THAW has been that it is just one big level and there are no load times. Well, that isn’t completely true. The city of Los Angeles is split up into different sections that include, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Downtown, Beverly Hills, and East LA and these areas are connected by long sections of grind lines (while you are going through these sections the game is actually loading the next area). Really, the game doesn’t feel any bigger or any different than any of the other Tony Hawk games since the levels are about the same size and we don’t actually have free reign like we all though we would. There is also an indoor skate park, an oil rig, and a casino you’ll get to play in as well. The levels are absolutely covered with great lines and there are hidden pools and halfpipes all over the place and if you are the type of player that likes to look for tougher and less obvious lines this game is for you. Overall, though, none of the levels really jump out at you as classics and are pretty much middle of the road compared to the rest of the series.