Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

by Adam, 09.28.06

What the Guys Who Didn't Make Gun Were Doing

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It strikes me as funny that the world of extreme sports has never had a drug scandal, and most likely never will. And yet, illegal hash is universally associated with the skateboarders and punks of the world. I say nay, that people with this kind of athletic panache are either totally pissed, or just insanely in control. As for the former, that definitely applies to Neversoft. Its CEO Joel Jewett has referred to it as a, "Giant frathouse of chaos." Personally I find that any studio with 150 employees trying to develop two different games for six different systems (they eventually had to pass the PSP version of Gun along to british studio Rebellion) is pretty ballsy. So, I'll cut them a ton of slack for Gun, but when I look at American Wasteland... well, I'd rather that the series had just taken a year off. It would have meant more Colton White to go around anyway.

That's not to say that it's a bad game, it's just that the series remains totally stagnate with this installment. In hindsight this isn't a good sign because every Tony Hawk game has consequently one upped itself as the years go by (the 4th is my personal favorite). If there are any improvements here, it's that Bam Margera is nowhere to be found (Hu-freaking-zzah!), and the level designs are much better than THUG2's, but to be fair, that's a given with every game, so it doesn't really count.

So how does American Wasteland string along its action? By adding a streaming engine that lets you travel to the next level whenever you want. It's nice, but it's not as if the past installments really suffered from it, and the flow of the city is disrupted in the execution. The different districts of Los Angeles are all connected with strangely ambiguous hallways, almost completely devoid of objects to skate on. This chops up the action not unduly, but still very noticeable, and not quite truthful when the game never stops shouting its no-loading credo at you.

With that in mind the only leg American Wasteland has to stand on is the gameplay that's derivative of every installment in this franchise. And considering that, this leg is totally impervious to criticism. Tony Hawk is one of the finer institutions in gaming, it's just that with American Wasteland, its goals and gameplay have been separated whereas the previous games always had the two hand in hand.

What I'm saying here is that THAW's objectives are pathetically easy, you can breeze through the entire story in as little as five to six hours, and as an experienced TH player, I found that I had maxed out my stats far too quickly just by skating around the levels. Every mission acts like a tutorial, you go around thrashing on particularly eye-catching objects to build the ultimate skate park, and the game holds your hand telling you what to do through every mission. Grind this rail, jump here, and now do an acid drop to piss off this cop. Not very nerve racking at all. I remember in the last level of TH4 you had to do a million point combo. It took me almost three hours to do that, but there isn't anything in THAW remotely challenging. It's the first installment in this series that treads water, and that's always a bad sign, even after seven games.

On 360 THAW looks pathetic, keeping the current gen engine, with all of the 360 "essentials" (4x anti-aliasing, dynamic lighting, 720p support, etc.) tacked on. But on the other technical spectrum the sound has everything you ever need. Once again the soundtrack is marvelous, seriously, it's one of the best in the series ever, and as always, the resident sound effects are bone-jarringly on target. And finally, the multiplayer is now on XBOX Live for the first time.

Final Word

THAW is worth buying, perfect gameplay, stupendous level designs, and a superlative soundtrack are the reasons. But in the realm of Tony Hawk games, this is by far the worst. It does little to reinvent itself, or take the series beyond the pale, as all past installments had. As well as being completely devoid of challenge for Tony Hawk vets. This is a great game to get if you haven't encountered the series before, but it won't last very long in the hands of the initiated. Especially since you can buy the soundtrack on CD.