GENRE
	Extreme Sports
	DEVELOPER
	Neversoft
	PUBLISHER
	Activision
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1-2
	CONNECTIVITY
	no
	BUY NOW AT

Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky: all are considered the greatest at their sport, but were any of them more dominant than Tony Hawk? In 103 tournaments, Tony Hawk skated away with 73 wins and 19 second place finishes. He turned pro at 14. He has invented over 100 tricks and trick combinations. He was the first to complete a 900 at the X-Games. Oh, and his video games sell pretty well too. Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland introduces a free-roaming approach to the series. It is his newest GC entry, and Tony Hawk knows how to make an entrance.

visuals

Wasteland presents spacious and varied areas to travel. Each section of city is loaded in its entirety, so there are no problems with draw distance. This is nice because the most important graphical aspect of, for instance, the side of a building is what it looks like as you approach it. Once you get to the building and start performing tricks, you will spend so much time spinning in the air or staring at a balance meter that what the half pipe looks like will soon become a non-factor.

Not that the cities look bad, because they look great. They're well-detailed, but most importantly they are always visible.

Wasteland uses a system similar to Metroid Prime due to its large play areas. Neversoft wanted the added benefit of eliminated load times, and Wasteland accomplishes both large environments and no delay by individually loading smaller chunks of the city to create one gigantic skating world. For example, to get to Beverly Hills you leave Hollywood through a long corridor. While inside the corridor, Beverly Hills loads and Hollywood disappears. So for a time being, you’re really not in either place, but you are still playing. The corridors are scaled down with only rails to grind on or some small ramps, but the system works. It is certainly better than watching a loading bar.

The character models are also well-animated. Some faces are better than others, but they all move realistically. Everything about your character-- shoes, hair, boards, pads, tattoos-- is customizable. Actually, it’s a required mission to change the look of your character. Because of the thousands of possible combinations, Wasteland allows you to create just about any type of character you want.

audio

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to change my character’s voice. Most of the voices in the game are intentionally over-the-top; the kid who just ate 20 sugar packets is very excited and the oil rig captain is very southern. My character, however, is very whiney. Since the game is filled with quite a few scenes of dialogue, it gets somewhat irritating. Sometimes the voices don't match up with the gestures of the characters, and a few times the voice work stopped all together until I restarted the game. As a result, I turned on the captions and began reading the scenes, skipping them altogether whenever I could.

Other sound effects are well done. The skateboard sounds like a skateboard and the sound effects change depending on the surface skated upon. Your head makes such a loud thud when you crash that I’m surprised there was no mission to the hospital.

Wasteland also features a gigantic soundtrack of over 70 songs. Some of the tracks are new covers of older songs, while most are of the punk-rock variety. Whether or not you like the music is a matter of personal taste, and you can turn off songs you don’t like, but there is enough diversity that the music stays fresh.

gameplay

Like most free-roaming games, Wasteland uses a story mode to create a purpose for playing. You talk to people, they give you something to do, and you are rewarded. Initially, this is how the primary skateboarding skills are learned, but eventually the main objective is revealed-- construction of a new skate park. This is achieved by “gathering” pieces from the southern California cities in the game world. The "gathering" is usually accomplished by performing a specific trick on or near the skate park piece that in real life would not react the way it does in-game. For instance, I doubt grinding on a highway street sign would make it fall over.

But that’s okay, because doing it all is, ultimately, a ton of fun. For beginners to the genre, it's daunting to learn the many combos the game requires, but they are introduced through in-game instructions at a decent pace. Each trick is learned by copying another character in the game. When performed correctly, the trick is added to the main character's trick repertoire. As more tricks are learned, sponsor challenges can be completed that will increase specific abilities of the player's character, such as better balance on rails. Other additional challenges earn money or special tricks.

None of this happens too quickly. Time has to be put into Wasteland, but the more that is put in, the more comes out. At first, the only explorable environment is Hollywood, but over time more areas unlock for the rest of the game.

The skate park is particularly well done. It begins with one half pipe, but as architecture pieces are collected, it grows into a city-sized ranch with some outrageous sections. Once completed far enough, Wasteland’s game world acts like one massive skate park. Virtually every inch of every area can be used as a ramp for air tricks or a rail for grind tricks. The variety in the different locations makes it worthwhile to explore each area’s back alleys and hidden corners. Pulling off massive combos and finding new spots for those combos will bring a smile to anyone’s face. Add in the classic mode and a great custom track editor, and Wasteland will keep gamers playing long after the main quest is complete.

multiplayer

In Wasteland, two players can either work together in classic mode or against each other in one of several competitive modes. The cooperative mode plays just like the single player version of classic mode: complete certain score objectives and find items. The competitive modes are hit and miss. The best is Graffiti mode, where players compete to “tag” the most items by performing tricks upon them. For example, if you grind a rail it becomes yours and you get a point. Later, if your opponent grinds that rail, it becomes his and he takes the point away from you.

The other modes require each of you to find the other. This can be a problem because with the exception of a capture the flag mode, there is no radar. Without the radar, it is next to impossible to find the other skater, and these modes are near pointless.

overall

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland creates a near-perfect balance that all free roaming games strive to achieve. You can take your time, enjoy the skating environments and complete missions whenever you want, but completing the missions makes independent skating a better experience. Rather than using the main game to unlock artwork or hidden skaters that do little to improve the actual game, Wasteland uses it to open new skating areas and tricks, which are the heart of the game. If you are willing to invest time in Wasteland, you will walk away with a long and rich experience.

9.0/10