Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

"If only they had worked on it for a few more months..."

If only they had worked on it for a few more months...
While hyped up as a "free-roaming" L.A., THAW fails to deliver the skating experience that made the series so great.

Story-4/10
Why even bother with a story? Seriously, who really cares? The "plot" of this game revolves around a new skater in L.A. He meets some people who have a giant, but mostly empty, skatepark, and the story mostly revolves around getting new pieces for the park. There are a few twists and turns, but that is the general meat of the game.

Gameplay-6/10
The gameplay this year feels much less polished. With your skater being a newbie and all, he starts off knowing very few tricks. It doesn't take to long for him to "learn" the basics (like manuals and reverts), but some of the more complex moves (like special) don't come until later. The spoon-fed nature of the game makes it seem like a giant tutorial, with what feels like every other goal "teaching" you another trick. Very few of the goals actually involve points, most of them are just "go to this spot and do this trick", which gets old very, very, quickly. Your character also lacks the ability to preform Special moves until later in the game, and even then you can't choose the tricks or even edit the button presses to do them! For people like me who have always mapped their specials to the same buttons, this is a a pretty big pain. The game feels like it was aimed at people new to the series, but even on the "Sick" difficulty, you still have to go through the entire tutorial process. The game also includes some optional BMX goals, but the controls aren't that great, and for the most part you'll just want to leave it alone.

The game also includes Classic Mode, which is a throwback to the good old days of THPS. The problem is, there are only 6 levels! Come on! You can beat it in under an hour! Granted, a few of these levels are very nice ports from old THPS games, and it is fun to play these old levels with the new tricks that have been added.

All the ads for the game talk about how this game is one massive recreation of L.A. with one giant level and no load times. This is really only partly true. The game is devided into a number of disticnt levels connected by "load tunnels", which are narrow paths (such as sewers or parking garages) that the game uses to buffer the next area. Yes, there are a few rails and ramps in these tunnels, but you can definitly feel the game chop up as the next area is loaded. While this fails to live up to the promise of a giant L.A., the lack of load times is nice, but most of the levels themselves are small, bland, uninterasting, and just lack polish. Most of them are just a square that I guess is supposed to represent a city block, with a few cross streets. There are a few exceptions to this, but for the most part this stands true. The levels seem to lack depth, and finding your own lines isn't nearly as fun.

The game is also riddled with glitches. The game freezes during some cutscenes, freezes while changing levels, and sometimes freezes for no reason at all. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it requires you to reset your system and lose everything since your last save, which is doubly annoying because saving and loading take FOREVER, so you will mostly just not save until you are ready to quit. Most of the goals and story segments for that matter are acted out with horrendous voice acting. The funny part is, very often the subtitles DON'T MATCH what the people are saying! This is so obvious that it makes you wonder how this game to the OK to ship. This game just feels like a rush job.

Music-9/10
As always, this TH game includes an excellent soundtrack. It may not be as good as previous years, but it still is great.

Sound-7/10
Nothing to write home about. Most of the sound effects feel recycled from previous games, but for the most part they are pretty good.

Graphics-7/10
Again, nothing to write home about. The graphics are pretty decent, but sometimes glitches will occur where you will be grinding on an invisible rail.

Overall- 6/10 (not an average)
If you are a TH fan, you should get it just for the new levels to skate around in. I would wait until the price drops before you pick it up though. Otherwise, just rent the game. You can enjoy everything it has to offer in a single weekend.

Pros:
-Excellent soundtrack
-Minimal load times
-Online play (I haven't actually played online, but apperantly it is pretty good)

Cons:
-Numerous bugs and glitches
-Small, bland level design
-Story mode very short
-Classic mode also very short
-Game just feels rushed

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/05