Written by Jeff Buckland, 11/8/2005
Played on:
Xbox
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is the seventh game in the long-running yearly series of skateboarding games by Neversoft and Activision. If you're new to the series, this game is going to really impress you with its depth, move set, gameplay modes, and more. But if you've already played through all the previous Tony Hawk games multiple times each, you've gotta be asking yourself this: "What could they have possibly added this time to get me to spend another $50?" Sadly, my answer might not really encourage you.
Camera-mugger Bam Margera and his band of buffoons (I say this in a good way!) was a big part of the last two Tony Hawk games, but he's pretty scarce here Wasteland - and even though I actually like Bam, I'm glad he's taking a break. Gone is the Total Destruction Tour (or whatever the hell that stupid story was in the THUG games), and instead we get a much more cohesive storyline that focuses on skating rather than going around blowing stuff up. It's too bad that the emphasis on story has actually detracted from the skating action, but we'll get more into that later.
If you're looking for the big character creation facility seen in previous games, you won't find it in the story mode at all. Instead, you'll pick one of five guys to play as, and you'll hop on a bus from the skater-hating Midwest to Los Angeles. The whole game takes place here, so get comfy - and some of the first things you'll be doing in the game is customizing how your guy looks. This actually gives you fewer choices than previous games in the series, because you can change his clothing, skate decks, tattoos (eventually), and more, but you can't play as a female and have to go with one of the five pre-made guys. The full creator is still here and can be used for online play, free skate, and classic mode, though.
Eventually, you'll meet up with a few skaters that become your best buddies and pals, and that leads to meets with some classic and new pro skaters. These parts are much more well-done than in previous games, as you won't just meet up with Bob Burnquist just standing out on the street. You'll need to advance the story by doing missions to get to meet these guys. You even get to hang out with some of the Z-Boys which were glorified in that recent Lords of Dogtown movie (too bad most people won't see the infinitely-better documentary that preceded it), and a few of the new moves in Wasteland actually originate from their skating style.
The story starts off well enough, but it's short and starts to fizzle out quickly. The missions will mostly have you learning new moves and breaking stuff in the game world to take back to your "Skate Ranch", a landfill-gone-skatepark that you'll build piece by precarious piece. But most of these goals can usually be finished in mere seconds, especially if you've played previous games in the series and know the moves well. Your character starts off with only basic knowledge of skating and a small arsenal of moves, but it's not long before you've picked up the most important essentials like manuals, reverts, and a special meter.
Essentially, American Wasteland is just too hard for a Tony Hawk novice, and it's too easy for the seasoned player. The tutorial makes plenty of effort to alleviate this, but it just plain doesn't work. Moves like manuals and reverts are simple for me because I've been doing them literally for years, but the timing required for this stuff is just way too touchy for a beginner to learn before he or she will throw down their controller in anger. And for the pros out there, you'll still need to go through all the goofy tutorial moves because they're part of the story.
Later on in the game, you'll be cruising around the city looking for stuff that you can take back to the Skate Ranch. There are a few missions that play out like classic Tony Hawk goals, including some score and combo-oriented ones, but for the most part the game lines you up and points directly at what you're supposed to do. I remember trying to figure out how to release this huge metal ball in THPS4 and figuring out that I needed to grind the wire that surrounds it. Well, that's all spelled out for you literally every time in THAW, so there's just little left to do but just bust the moves that you're told. And while the results of your proficient move-busting are usually amusing (hint: it usually involves breaking something huge and causing chaos), those are just cutscenes; I want to be entertained while I'm playing rather than when I'm not.
In the Tony Hawk's Underground games, Neversoft added both silly and normal vehicles to spruce up the action. This time around, they've taken out all that and put in BMX biking. While the set of moves available to you in BMX mode is pretty decent, there's little to do with the actual bike other than earn a bit of in-game cash on a random trick goal here and there. It seems odd that the developers spent all the effort putting in bikes and their tricks, and then giving you little reason to actually use them during the story mode.
It's really difficult for me to give American Wasteland a bad score, because it truly is a great game, but it's also the seventh in the series. There's a whole new world to go skate in, the classic mode which brings back old-school goals (even if the classic levels you play in have been seen a few too many times as unlockables in the series), and the "create" modes which allow you to make all kinds of new stuff that you can even take into online play. So what's the problem? In this seventh year of the Tony Hawk series, I'm tired of the same old moves and game structure with a basic spit-shined story thrown on. On top of that, the simplistic missions to finish don't really make me feel like I am actually accomplishing anything.
Online play is still a blast, though, and there are plenty of new gameplay modes as well as some great levels to play with. The new levels have great "lines" (series of rails, ramps, and other objects to create a huge combo of tricks with) that require a bit of thought to put together, and the addition of online play to the Xbox version of the game means that the PS2 version is no longer the obvious choice for Tony Hawk enthusiasts.
From a technical standpoint, Wasteland has improved little over its predecessors. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, seeing as game developers have definitely squeezed out the full power of the Xbox over the last year or so. Sure, the levels are large, but they're no bigger than in the last couple games, and the graphics haven't significantly improved in any way that I have noticed.
The only technical addition this year is a new "loading-free" system, which doesn't really work in my opinion. Essentially, instead of freezing the game and loading up new level data, Neversoft has you skate through some drab tunnels or hallways to get to the new area - meanwhile, the game's loading up whatever area of the city you're heading towards. Sure, you can skate from one section of Los Angeles to another, and even manage to throw together a long combo between sections, but I don't see any real reason why players want to really bother. What we get here is just very slightly better than actual loading screens.
We can't talk about a Tony Hawk game without mentioning the soundtrack, but it seems like every year less and less emphasis is placed on it. What we get are a few key tracks mixed in with plenty of punk and covers of older songs, but since the game keeps the music volume low (unless you go and turn it up yourself), it's barely just background noise. Luckily, the Xbox version supports custom soundtracks, which in my opinion makes this the platform of choice for American Wasteland alone - and I'm not even considering the fact that the graphics are better and smoother on this version than on the PS2 or GameCube.
On an absolute scale, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is an incredible game. For a novice player the learning curve is prohibitively steep, but if they dig deep enough they'll find a huge wealth of value in the story mode, online play, customizable elements, and tons of moves available to your skater. On the other hand, seasoned players won't find much here that they haven't already done a bunch of times in previous Tony Hawk games - if you feel that the series has been losing its charm over the years, well, this one is only going to reinforce that feeling. But if you're just rabid for more skating action, then American Wasteland won't disappoint you (much).
