Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland review

Tony Hawks American Wasteland (THAW) is the seventh instalment of the long line of updates to the skateboard franchise that started life on the PlayStation. With the promise of no loading times and an expansive environment Neversoft is trying to push the consoles to their limits in terms of memory and accessibility. The PC port is the last version to see the light of day and it should be a simpler task on a PC to rid the game of loading times but this is a straight port from the console version and as such the criticisms that have been made of those other versions can also be levelled at the PC version.

Story Time

THAW features a story mode which has a fairly gentle learning curve and is the meat of the game in addition to a classic mode which allows more experienced gamers to get straight into the action. Classic mode provides a choice of real life skaters with all the usual suspects present and accounted for including Bam Margera and Tony Hawk or you can create your own skater.

You have to create a skater for the story mode from a series of templates who can then be dressed and groomed to your choosing. The story mode is fairly predictable but that's not necessarily a problem. You start off leaving your hometown to seek out the bright lights of Los Angeles where you're mugged and left with just your skateboard and a wad of cash. From here Mindy appears and takes you under her wing and convinces some of her friends to teach you some skills. Experienced players will find this aspect frustrating as you can't access a move until you've completed the task to learn it. Mindy is your guide through the story mode and she introduces you to various friends who will challenge you and teach you new tricks.

Cartography 101

Mindy is also your guide to the world of American Wasteland. The “no loading screens” principle of THAW is implemented the same as in the console versions as is the seamless expansive world. The world is divided into distinct areas that are “seamlessly joined by tunnels”. These long corridors contain a few items in that you can trick on while the next area is loaded, so you basically get a long boring corridor instead of a loading screen.

This actually tends to feel more frustrating than a loading screen as it serves no purpose but you still have to be involved in it. Still, the action being divided up into map areas doesn't affect the gameplay particularly. It just means that THAW doesn't innovate in this area as much as the marketing machine behind it might make you believe. The maps are well thought out with plenty of structures for you to trick on. More or less every vertical surface has a quarter-pipe on it and there's plenty of handrails and wall edges waiting for you to grind them.

Nice Handle

The first, and probably most significant, problem that you'll encounter in THAW is the control system. Be prepared to write stuff down because it will probably take you a while to remember what's going on. You can use the keyboard but make sure that you either remap the keys or at least take a look at what the defaults are because they're not obvious. The cursor keys, for instance, don't cause you to move – that would be too straightforward – instead you use w, s, a, d to move.

Of course if you use a controller then it should be a bit more straightforward. That is until you try to perform a trick in story mode. The cutscene that introduces each trick to be learned includes a guide of which buttons to press in which order. Sadly the buttons you're told to press bear no relation to the buttons that you need to press. I'm not sure what the buttons that you're told to press are supposed to mean but even using the keyboard on default mapping they make no sense – when it tells you to press R to grind, don't bother pressing the R key because that doesn't do anything. That said, once you get the hang of it the controls work pretty well especially if you use a controller from your favourite console.

Sick Threads Dude

I tend to expect that PC versions of games will look better than on the console hardware that's a few years old and starting to look dated. THAW disappoints on that score somewhat. It looks more or less the same as the console versions but in a higher resolution. The graphics aren't bad, the characters move well and the animations on all of the moves look good and natural. It's just that when you've seen the game on PS2 and it looks basically the same on the PC you think that it should be able to be done better.

The cutscenes are quite poor, the animation is a bit stilted and unnatural but more irritatingly, the lip sync is nowhere near aligned. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with the graphics in any aspect of the game, it just feels a bit thrown together and rushed or done carelessly. The soundtrack is a better job with a licensed soundtrack featuring plenty of complaint-rock from the likes of Green Day and Scissor Sisters. The rest of the sound track to the game works pretty well. There's not a great deal to it to be fair but what there is sounds good. The skateboard and BMX sounds are good and the crashes and thumps of impacts are all well handled. There's nothing innovative or fantastic about it but it's all pretty good.

It's a Classic Mode

There's slightly more to THAW than just the skateboard and the story mode. This Tony Hawk game allows you to ride a BMX freely in any part of the levels. There are BMX specific controls and missions to complete. This presents some more life in the game with a new set of challenges to learn and a different feel on the action.

There's also a classic mode which allows you to control real skaters and take part in separate challenges. You can go for a high score trick combo or collect floating letters in a series of mini-games. These provide a better challenge for more experienced skaters as you have access to all of the moves and areas without a story mode holding your hand as you go.

Totally Rad

Tony Hawks American Wasteland is a good game. It's perhaps lacking over its predecessor in terms of some features but that helps to simplify things down to what's fun. There's a fine line between helping newcomers to learn the ropes whilst not putting off veterans of the previous games. If you haven't played Tony Hawk before then this is definitely worth checking out as long as you have a good controller and won't rely on the keyboard.

There are clearly problems with it which seem to all stem from this being a lacklustre conversion from the consoles. If you're a veteran of the series then you should consider passing on this instalment. It provides a new story but you might find it restrictive and too easy. The create-a-skater mode has been reduced from the previous version and some of the other features a step backwards in the aim of simplifying things to make it more accessible. All in all it's a good game but then so were the previous Tony Hawk games. There's nothing significant to recommend this over the previous ones if you already own one. If you don't then this is a good introduction to the series.