5 stars (the best game ever) - I got tony hawk's american wasteland the day it came out and it was awesome once I got home I played it for 6 hours striaght then I whent outside and started to skateboard I have a real board its baker skate co. uhmm whell anywhey its awesome!!!! seeya
5 stars (Wasteland cleans up the series) - Seven years ago, skateboarding became a game genre with Pro Skater. Every year after that, new additions and refined gameplay kept me playing all four Pro Skaters and both Undergrounds. In all of those years, nothing has impressed me more than Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Somehow Neversoft has done it; they've made the perfect skating game.
I'll skip telling the story, since it's basically the same "get respect" crap that was in the Underground games, and also because the gameplay has been refined to the point of perfection. Neversoft saw it coming--they've outdone themselves and done everything to skateboarding that they could. So other than a few interesting additions to the skateboarding formula (like board stalls, bert slides, and parkour), and the ability to ride and trick on BMX bikes, the coolest addition is the free-sprawling recreation of Los Angeles that serves as the world of THAW. The city is divided into sections, which takes away from some of the huge feel, but I still felt overwhelmed at first by the size of the world. This world is so much fun to skate in that I basically neglected the fact that the story mode goals are terribly easy and repetitive, but serve their purpose in unlocking huge portions of an even larger world.
The controls are spot-on, the combos are still fun, and that's what keeps me coming back to this series. As a note to Neversoft, I don't care about epic storylines and I'm happy with the removal of Bam Margera from the story in general. I'm pleased, as a fan of this series, that I finally have a Hawk game that has the moves, the good controls, and the levels (well, the level) that can keep me playing for another year or two until another boarding game rolls up. |
