Tony Hawk's American Wasteland Review

One of the biggest features of the Tony Hawk series has been the increasingly customizable skater features. In Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, you can create your own skater, tricks, and graphics, exactly like before. One cool new feature is the huge number of real life T-shirts and other clothing that you can choose. Do you like your new hoodie, and want to be wearing it in the game? You can probably put it on your character, or make one that looks close.

Unfortunately, you can't use you custom skater in the story mode. Having to raise money to customise your guy is a big part of the game. I found this irritating, but that's becasue I like to make me. A little buffer, and with better skating skills, but still me. When you start out story mode, you have to chose your character from a lineup of 5 guys (one black, one asian, one hispanic, and two white), so you likely won't get someone with a face and body like you. Especaily if you happen to be a girl.

Durring Story Mode, you still get to create custom tricks - the game has certain "Inspiration Points", where you can chose to create new tricks. It works out well, and you can take your custom stuff from Story Mode online and show 'em off.

The online play for Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is one of the best things about the game - seriously. You can have friends lists, play games like capture the flag, graffiti, goal attack, trick attack and others with up to 8 players. The online feature adds a lot to THAW. For example, with how large the levels are, there are plenty of places that you might know about that others wont! This can make games like Grafitti pretty sweet. Plus, when you are playing online, you get to show off your customised skater, tricks and graphics, which is pretty cool.

But you own a Gamecube you say? No online play for you! It's sad, but true.

And what about multiplayer within Tony Hawk's American Wasteland? It seems that Neversoft has officialy descided that no one wants to play a skate game with thier friends. I mean, you can play online and that rocks, but what about when you have friends over? If you want to justify your purchase of four controllers and actualy play a skateboarding video game with three other friends, you need to invest in Tony Hawk Pro Skater TWO X. Yep, not since then have any of the Tony Hawk games featured three or four player compatability. I can't tell you how angry this makes me. For you see, while I like playing games online, I also have friends. Real friends, who I hang out with. And when it comes to playing video games together, we play Halo 2. Always. And sometimes, I really want to play something different, and I got all excited with the advent of this new Tony Hawk game, but No. If I want to play SKATE (or my friend's own custom word...) with my buddies then we get to play Tony How Pro Skater 2X. And the graphics on that puppy are a little lacking these days. Seriously, give us FOUR PLAYER COMPATABILITY! AARRGH! Or, since there's this gaping hole in the video game market, someone else come along and fill it! I'd buy it!

The bottom line is, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is a great game. I have pointed out everything that bugs me about it, since this is a review and all, but it really is a good game. The graphcis, game play, sound, online play, customizability, everything - these all add up to a good game. Unfortunately, it's nothing new - it's just better than the last ones.

So, if you like the Tony Hawk games, you'll probably like this one too. If you didn't like the last few that came out, you probably won't like this one - unless your complaint had to do with Bam and the over-the-top attitude of the game. In that case, I recomend giving Tony Hawk's American Wasteland a try. The gameplay is smooth, the graphics are up to date, the soundtrack is incrediable, and the story mode progresses quickly.

All in all, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is a fun game, and it gives a lot of freedom for play. If you have a Playstation or X-Box, and you have online cabability, then I highly recomend it. Otherwise, the game is still fun, and if you like the rest of the series, you should love this one. After all, it's better.