Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

"American Wasteland: A Waste Indeed"

I enjoyed the old Tony Hawk games a good deal. They were fun and took hours of your time away. But by no means is Tony Hawk's American Wasteland the best in the series, and for 10 dollars more, and on a next generation council, I expected it to be. I did not play this title on the PS2 or X-Box and that is a regret I have, because I could have saved myself 60$.

Game play: 7/10
Same as always, with some new tricks added that make it rather fun. If you played a lot of THUG and THUG 2 then this will not impress you, and certainly is no reason to buy this game. The environment is very interactive now which is nice, and overall the best Tony Hawk game play yet, but not enough has changed and realism is at a minimum. The whole "NO LOADING TIME" is true in some cases, but you will still wait around while things load up even though it is not technically loading.

Story Mode:
This will be broken down into 2 sub categories:

Plot: 7/10
Enjoyable. I liked this part. Its actually unpredictable for a change and the characters you meet have very distinct personalities and you really do get to know these people. The voice acting is also pretty good, the voices match the characters, which is a nice touch. However some of it seems way over the top, and *Minor Spoilers* You attack a police car with the cop standing right there and a man shoots some construction equipment, and yet the cops do not see m to ever get mad or come after you. There are no chase scenes or anything exciting. It could have been better here.

Challenges: 2/10
Honestly terrible. The challenges are all really easy, really hard, and all just kind of generic and one sided. Most of them are "do this trick" or "do the random tricks I call out" and its true a lot of them have an interesting outcome but they just are not fun. Biggest letdown of this game for me.

Graphics: 5/10
These are great x-box graphics. These are horrible X-box 360 graphics. You do not get that next generation feel while playing it. To me the game needs to look almost real, and you can tell that it is not real by looking at it, and I am sure they could have done better.

Music (3/5)/Sound(2/5): 5/10
Not exactly impressive. There is a ton of music which is nice, but most of it is unimpressive. The sounds are very generic and do not put you into the mind of a skateboarder.

Value: 5/10
The game is worth 30$ max, certainly not the $60 that it is sold for in stores. It has some fun to be had, but not as much as some other X-box 360 launch titles do.

Overall: 5/10
Like previously stated, there is some fun to be had, but the graphics do not stand up to other 360 games, the game play is good but not that good, and the story mode is worth playing, but you might as well rent it, or buy the game for the original x-box, where you can get it cheaper.

Good start. Not the best game.

Buy/Rent: Rent. Maybe.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/27/06