Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (simply THAW from now on) sees the series return to the more recognisable pastures of the Tony Hawk series. Gone is the MTV inspired craziness of THUG2 (XBW: 82). Gone are the vehicles of THUG (XBW: 88). And in its place we have a few more new moves, BMX biking ala Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, and whilst all elements of the entire series are still retained, the biggest addition for Xbox gamers is Xbox Live! online play.

The series has always been known for it’s great presentation, but this time it’s been upped a notch by the inclusion of art by famous Santa Cruz artist Jimbo Philips. The name might not be familiar to those who live their lives on the Xbox, but those of us with even a passing interest in skating, surfing and the associated scene will be very familiar with Jimbo’s wacky designs and intense yet funny artwork. Jimbo’s art shows up in cut scenes, and the cut scenes tell the story of a young country boy (you) who makes his way to LA to make it big on the skate circuit. Once he arrives, he’s robbed by some skate thugs, but befriended by punk chick Mindy, who helps him get his stuff back. In return, the skater boy promises to help Mindy get her skate ‘zine ‘American Wasteland’ published. Along the way you get to help a bunch of misfits build a skate park, and impress the pro scene skaters.

The gameplay of THAW hasn’t altered too much from the paradigm set up in THUG. You skate up to people with Stars over their head, and they will give you goals to achieve in order to progress the story. Most of these involve tricking off certain items in the map to proceed to the next goal. All the old tricks are available, and if you know the series you won’t have any problems performing them. The key to most goals is to perform the tricks called out, or gets the highest possible score in a combo. New tricks include rolls, off the board skills, and old skate tricks pioneered by the Dog Town Z Boys. Rolls are where you spin your entire body when in the air, and they look cool although they’re quite difficult to pull off. The off-the board skills involve wall climbing and flipping off walls. The old school moves include the Natas spin which is spinning on a pivot, and the Bert Slide, which is where you put your hand on the ground and pivot on your hand, much like how surfers touch the wave when surfing.

Once you unlock the skate park, usually the goal will involve tricking off something in the environment causing it to crash or smash, and then the item will be transported to the skate park, where you’re encouraged to make a big score off of it in some way. This is a little different to the THUG series where the goal was just to cause destruction and open up new areas of the maps. This does happen in THAW, although not to such a great extent. Something that is different is that you can now skate from one side of world to the other without seeing any loading screens. This makes the game world seem much more cohesive, and it’s a lot of fun skating and tricking from one area of LA to another. For example, it’s possible to skate from Hollywood to East LA via the subway. There’s a bit of slowdown in the connecting areas, but it’s barely noticeable.

The BMX is a new feature and replaces the vehicles found in THUG. Whilst the controls are similar to the skateboard, the bike does have different physics and some different tricks. For example, you use the triggers as the front and rear breaks. And yes, you can flip the bike by applying too much pressure to the front break at too high a speed. Tricks are pulled off using the same face buttons as skateboarding, as well as the Right Joystick to do further BMX specific moves, such as tail whips and crank tricks. The bike isn’t used a great deal in the story, but is a lot of fun to ride – much better than the vehicles in the previous series, and by finding the guy with the bike icon above his head and performing certain tricks, you can make money to customise your skater.

Classic mode returns with classic maps from the entire Tony Hawk series, and like in THUG, this is a welcome addition to the game, as it extends the gameplay greatly. This time Co-operative Mode on classic allows two players to try and achieve the goals in the two-minute time limit together. In addition to these modes, all the usual Multiplayer of the Tony Hawk game are included such as Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Slap!, Combo Mambo, Firefight, and a new one called Pot ‘o Gold, – the person who is “it” scores points until they are hit by another player, who then becomes “it”. And also the Create-A- modes make a welcome return, allowing you to customise your online skater, create tricks, new graffiti tags, and skateparks. Unfortunately you can’t take your parks online, which is a shame.

Xbox Live play makes a welcome entry into THAW. There are three extra modes available on Live and they are Elimiskate, Goal Attack and Capture the Flag. Elimiskate is like trick attack, but the person with the lowest score at the end of the round is eliminated. This seems to be the most popular game on Live, and playing it I experienced a little bit of lag, but never enough to really cause concern. Sometimes the lag will cause you to do utterly weird things, like change direction in mid air, but it never seemed to actually interrupt the flow of the game. Goal Attack is like playing classic mode against other people – the person to score the most goals like collect the Videos, or find the letters SKATE – wins. Not knowing the maps makes this mode a little more difficult for n00bs, so practice in Classic mode first. Capture the Flag is fun, but I have difficulty finding players. Overall the Live experience is just like playing in with a friend, and is great fun, and a great break from all the shooters and driving games.

Apart from the cool artwork of Jimbo Philips, THAW doesn’t really boggle the mind with its graphics. The levels are colourful, but the detail is lacking in the skater models. There are certain times where graphic and animation glitches occur, especially when on the bike and you end up in an unusual position the animation will freak out and you’ll see your skater spin or jump around in place, but these occur fairly infrequently. There are some cool animations though, and the breakdance move is classic, especially when you do it in the alien costume.

The music is, as always, top notch. The game kicks off with Dead Kennedy’s Holiday in Cambodia, which made me rate the game highly right from the beginning. The soundtrack is full of old and new punk, hiphop and rock, and of course you can have your own soundtracks, but there was never I moment when I thought the music was repetitive or boring. The dialogue is a little less top notch, with some scenes the game pausing a little too long when loading the next line, making it seem very much like the lines were read rather than acted. There doesn’t seem to be too much emotion in the readings either, but it’s never enough so you want to mute the game.

Conclusion:
THAW shows that the series isn’t quite dead, but like THUG2 it’s really hard to see what they can do with the series in the future. The addition of Xbox Live means fans can finally compete and rank themselves against each other online, and it’s more than worth the price for that. But if you’ve played THUG and THUG2, then THAW isn’t all that different. The return to more trick based gameplay is welcome, but there doesn’t seem to be much more they can do with the series. Then again, I said that at the end of my THUG2 review, and Neversoft have delivered an enjoyable gameplay experience once again.

Pros:
A welcome return to trick based gameplay
BMX is really fun to ride
New tricks and animations that look cool.
Finally Xbox live enabled, with fun, relatively lag free skating to be had.
No loading screens between areas.

Cons:
Some graphical glitches
Voice acting not that great
No real improvement to gameplay (but that’s only because it’s so good to begin with)

87/100