Don't let the recent name changes fool you. Tony Hawk's American
Wasteland is the seventh Tony Hawk game developed by Neversoft in as
many years. Over the years the series has had installments that made
dramatic changes to the formula, but the more recent installments have
focused less on gameplay or structural changes and more on including a
story. American Wasteland is the game that finally makes good on the
story thing by offering a plot that's far more interesting than it's
been in the previous two games. It also attempts to put all its levels
together into one big take on Los Angeles that's free from loading
times. That part doesn't work out quite as well as the back of the box
would have you believe, but the real issue with American Wasteland is
with its gameplay. You'll find the requisite handful of new tricks, but
most of the story mode feels like a brief tutorial, and the classic mode
isn't deep or long enough to hold the attention of series veterans.
It's got more of the same fluid skating gameplay you've come to expect
from the series, but the game's over almost immediately.
Story mode puts you in the role of a nameless skater from the Midwest
who's given up on living in the middle of nowhere. Tired of being
hassled by The Man, you run away to Los Angeles with dreams of skating
in the area where skating all began. Things are going fine until just
after you step off the bus, which is where you get jumped by some toughs
who make off with your gear. A raspy-voiced girl named Mindy takes pity
on you and sets you off in the direction of an adventure that sends you
all around the city of Los Angeles, where you'll thrash, skate, and
destroy as you find a crew of squatting vandals to call your friends, a
skatepark to call your own, and...an alien costume. When you first
start, you'll be a pretty weak skater. Most of the moves you've come to
expect from the series, like manuals and reverts, won't even be
available to you until you learn them. You'll learn most of the basics
pretty quickly, but it'll take a little while before you learn to use
special tricks, flatland tricks, and focus.
You'll also learn the game's new tricks, like the bert slide, which is the ground-based, surfing-like maneuver brought back to the skating hive-mind by Dogtown and Z-Boys. You can also get off your board and swing it at pedestrians, which isn't terribly useful, and you can learn some freestyle running techniques for wall climbing, flips, and so on. You can also find and ride BMX bikes in the game, which come up in a couple of goals but are mostly there for you to earn money, which you'll need at various points in the story. The BMX bike controls are vastly different from the skating controls, and they're surprisingly well-thought-out. You'll hold a button to pedal, steer with the left analog controller, and perform tricks with the right. Also, some tricks are left up to you to put together. A flair, for example, is a backflip and a 180 turn combined. Bike games have traditionally just mapped that to a button and a direction, just like any other trick. Here you'll have to do a backflip and a 180 at the same time to get credit for a flair. The BMX stuff is minor, overall, but it's an interesting diversion.
Few of these new tricks really matter, because most of your goals in story mode simply ask you to quickly grind or natas-spin on an object or wallplant or sticker-slap something while watching the fun. Most of the game's goals are based around the skate ranch, an area found just off Beverly Hills that's mostly a large empty dirt lot with a halfpipe in it. One of the major thrusts of the story is your crew's desire to trick out the ranch, so you'll always have goals that involve you busting out a piece of the city so that it can get added to the ranch. There are a lot of different pieces to add to the ranch, but since most of them are required goals that get the story moving again, you won't have to go out of your way to get them. You'll have a few things to do in the skate ranch itself, but it's mostly just there for show and for free skating.
The main problem with the game's goals is that they're ridiculously straightforward and leave nothing to the imagination. If you need to grind some support cables to loosen a sign on top of a theater, the game sets you down directly in front of those support cables. After you grind them, the game will ask you to pull off a wallplant on the sign itself. Again, it drops you into the exact position to pull it off. The game really seems bent on holding your hand every step of the way. While forcing you to go out of your way to line yourself up might not be the most fun thing in the world, the way THAW is set up makes the entire story mode feel like a tutorial. If you've kept up with the Tony Hawk series over the years, you'll nail most of the game's goals on your first or second try. While it has a "sick" difficulty mode that's meant to make the game more challenging, it still lines you up just right, and it still forces you through all the early move-learning tutorial stuff. It's decidedly un-sick.
The saving grace of the story mode is that the story it tells is actually pretty good. It follows the standard "ragtag group of misfits' struggles to save the place they call home from evil real estate moguls" plot that drove such classic films as Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. But along the way, the characters become a little endearing, and most importantly, the game doesn't beat you over the head by shoehorning the pro skaters in whenever possible. When you finally do start encountering the game's pros, you do it in a way that feels natural, which is great. That said, the plot's got some holes, and the game's last mission hits you unexpectedly, exacerbating the game's short feel. If you were any good at playing previous Tony Hawk games, you'll probably be done in four or five hours.
A big part of the story mode is that it tries to present the entire city to you as one large skateable environment with no load times. That's true in theory, but it's not nearly as pure as it may sound. The city's levels are all separated by tight hallways you have to skate through to change areas. So you're technically still in control, but these hallways are lame and pointless and really might as well just be load screens. The game starts to load the new area when you enter the connecting area, which occasionally causes some stutters and skips in the frame rate. If you want, you can catch a bus from area to area, which saves you the hassle of having to skate from one end of LA to the other. Since you can walk around the bus while the interior of it shakes onscreen, this technically isn't a load time, right?
Download free click here
American Wasteland tells a pretty good story, but the gameplay is really starting to lose its luster.
You'll also learn the game's new tricks, like the bert slide, which is the ground-based, surfing-like maneuver brought back to the skating hive-mind by Dogtown and Z-Boys. You can also get off your board and swing it at pedestrians, which isn't terribly useful, and you can learn some freestyle running techniques for wall climbing, flips, and so on. You can also find and ride BMX bikes in the game, which come up in a couple of goals but are mostly there for you to earn money, which you'll need at various points in the story. The BMX bike controls are vastly different from the skating controls, and they're surprisingly well-thought-out. You'll hold a button to pedal, steer with the left analog controller, and perform tricks with the right. Also, some tricks are left up to you to put together. A flair, for example, is a backflip and a 180 turn combined. Bike games have traditionally just mapped that to a button and a direction, just like any other trick. Here you'll have to do a backflip and a 180 at the same time to get credit for a flair. The BMX stuff is minor, overall, but it's an interesting diversion.
Few of these new tricks really matter, because most of your goals in story mode simply ask you to quickly grind or natas-spin on an object or wallplant or sticker-slap something while watching the fun. Most of the game's goals are based around the skate ranch, an area found just off Beverly Hills that's mostly a large empty dirt lot with a halfpipe in it. One of the major thrusts of the story is your crew's desire to trick out the ranch, so you'll always have goals that involve you busting out a piece of the city so that it can get added to the ranch. There are a lot of different pieces to add to the ranch, but since most of them are required goals that get the story moving again, you won't have to go out of your way to get them. You'll have a few things to do in the skate ranch itself, but it's mostly just there for show and for free skating.
The main problem with the game's goals is that they're ridiculously straightforward and leave nothing to the imagination. If you need to grind some support cables to loosen a sign on top of a theater, the game sets you down directly in front of those support cables. After you grind them, the game will ask you to pull off a wallplant on the sign itself. Again, it drops you into the exact position to pull it off. The game really seems bent on holding your hand every step of the way. While forcing you to go out of your way to line yourself up might not be the most fun thing in the world, the way THAW is set up makes the entire story mode feel like a tutorial. If you've kept up with the Tony Hawk series over the years, you'll nail most of the game's goals on your first or second try. While it has a "sick" difficulty mode that's meant to make the game more challenging, it still lines you up just right, and it still forces you through all the early move-learning tutorial stuff. It's decidedly un-sick.
The saving grace of the story mode is that the story it tells is actually pretty good. It follows the standard "ragtag group of misfits' struggles to save the place they call home from evil real estate moguls" plot that drove such classic films as Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. But along the way, the characters become a little endearing, and most importantly, the game doesn't beat you over the head by shoehorning the pro skaters in whenever possible. When you finally do start encountering the game's pros, you do it in a way that feels natural, which is great. That said, the plot's got some holes, and the game's last mission hits you unexpectedly, exacerbating the game's short feel. If you were any good at playing previous Tony Hawk games, you'll probably be done in four or five hours.
A big part of the story mode is that it tries to present the entire city to you as one large skateable environment with no load times. That's true in theory, but it's not nearly as pure as it may sound. The city's levels are all separated by tight hallways you have to skate through to change areas. So you're technically still in control, but these hallways are lame and pointless and really might as well just be load screens. The game starts to load the new area when you enter the connecting area, which occasionally causes some stutters and skips in the frame rate. If you want, you can catch a bus from area to area, which saves you the hassle of having to skate from one end of LA to the other. Since you can walk around the bus while the interior of it shakes onscreen, this technically isn't a load time, right?
Download free click here
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