Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
We highly encourage you to Waste away.
Published: October 18, 2005
Aside from the obvious sports game, there are few (if any) franchises that have existed into the seventh iteration and maintained success. Fewer still (or, uh, less than none?) actually add something that fundamentally alters the gameplay to the point where the old game doesn’t quite feel as good. This is what Neversoft is capable of on a nearly yearly basis.
Now, you’ll notice I didn’t say the games got better every year, just that they kept introducing features that make it seem like they should have been there all along. No, the games in fact got quite a bit worse, mainly because they started to stray away from what made the originals so fun: a smart-ass attitude and just pure, simple skating on cleverly designed courses. Oh, and then there was the whole thing with Bam, and introducing pointless vehicles into the mix. Yeah, that was pretty bad too.
Luckily, this has been completely repaired with the latest version of the franchise. The ‘tude’s back, the level designs are packed with lines that feel solid, and the overall art direction and feel of the game culls from 80’s skate culture like none of the games have. Best still, all of the good things about the earlier games like more vertical level designs, destructible environments and all the moves they introduced are included here, with a better difficulty curve and more natural progression in the storyline.
The slow ramp-up isn’t a fluke; it’s a carefully designed way to introduce newcomers to things while telling a story that’s actually fun to watch. The game drops you in to Hollywood, fresh off a bus from somewhere in the mid-west where you picked your base ethnicity and look. One half-whiff of that thick, smoggy LA air, and your face finishes the breath with a few knuckles down your nostrils.
As the punks run off with your stuff, you’re introduced to Mindy, a raspy-voiced little skater girl bombshell with a penchant for indie art and a jones for self-published underground ‘zines. She knows the local skater crowd, senses your plight and helps introduce you to the riff-raff who slowly take you through the process of learning every single move introduced through the history of the series. Like I said, natural progression.
You literally start out with just the movies from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and then slowly, the game spoon feeds new movies – a revert here, a manual there, all the while throwing in the new moves that have been added. You’ll learn a Dogtown-era surf-born Bert Slide, learn that Natas Spins can now be modified for stuff like headstands, and you’ll learn that the off-board game is so improved it’s almost enough to seem fun.
The introduction of freerunning (or, if’d prefer, Parkour) elements, a much better camera and tighter controls no longer make it feel like you’re just skating with a run animation minus the board. It’s still a little touchy and floaty, but now the game allows for running up walls, jumping from one to the next and neat little flips off said walls or even standing front and back flips. It’s still obvious that you’re not really interacting with things when you magically climb up the rungs of a latter texture by placing your feet between the rungs, but it’s progress.
Once you’ve gotten a haircut, grabbed new threads and tore it up a bit with the locals, you can finally get your stuff back (and while learning you can throw and swing your board when you’re not on it now, neat!) and get introduced to the ruffians that session the Skate Ranch, an invite only could-be dream park run by one Iggy van Zant. Iggy’s old-school and skated with the Z-Boys, but got out before going pro and now lays low for reasons explained later on.
After proving yourself to him, he lets you crash at the Ranch and the task quickly becomes collecting bits and pieces from around all of LA for Mindy’s idea of a dream park. The fusion of urban landmarks and skateable lines means everything from the Hollywood sign to chunks of an offshore oil derrick can all be turned into one of the coolest level designs I’ve ever seen Neversoft whip up. And you get to see it slowly built piece by piece.
Now, you’ll notice I didn’t say the games got better every year, just that they kept introducing features that make it seem like they should have been there all along. No, the games in fact got quite a bit worse, mainly because they started to stray away from what made the originals so fun: a smart-ass attitude and just pure, simple skating on cleverly designed courses. Oh, and then there was the whole thing with Bam, and introducing pointless vehicles into the mix. Yeah, that was pretty bad too.
Luckily, this has been completely repaired with the latest version of the franchise. The ‘tude’s back, the level designs are packed with lines that feel solid, and the overall art direction and feel of the game culls from 80’s skate culture like none of the games have. Best still, all of the good things about the earlier games like more vertical level designs, destructible environments and all the moves they introduced are included here, with a better difficulty curve and more natural progression in the storyline.
The slow ramp-up isn’t a fluke; it’s a carefully designed way to introduce newcomers to things while telling a story that’s actually fun to watch. The game drops you in to Hollywood, fresh off a bus from somewhere in the mid-west where you picked your base ethnicity and look. One half-whiff of that thick, smoggy LA air, and your face finishes the breath with a few knuckles down your nostrils.
As the punks run off with your stuff, you’re introduced to Mindy, a raspy-voiced little skater girl bombshell with a penchant for indie art and a jones for self-published underground ‘zines. She knows the local skater crowd, senses your plight and helps introduce you to the riff-raff who slowly take you through the process of learning every single move introduced through the history of the series. Like I said, natural progression.
You literally start out with just the movies from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and then slowly, the game spoon feeds new movies – a revert here, a manual there, all the while throwing in the new moves that have been added. You’ll learn a Dogtown-era surf-born Bert Slide, learn that Natas Spins can now be modified for stuff like headstands, and you’ll learn that the off-board game is so improved it’s almost enough to seem fun.
The introduction of freerunning (or, if’d prefer, Parkour) elements, a much better camera and tighter controls no longer make it feel like you’re just skating with a run animation minus the board. It’s still a little touchy and floaty, but now the game allows for running up walls, jumping from one to the next and neat little flips off said walls or even standing front and back flips. It’s still obvious that you’re not really interacting with things when you magically climb up the rungs of a latter texture by placing your feet between the rungs, but it’s progress.
Once you’ve gotten a haircut, grabbed new threads and tore it up a bit with the locals, you can finally get your stuff back (and while learning you can throw and swing your board when you’re not on it now, neat!) and get introduced to the ruffians that session the Skate Ranch, an invite only could-be dream park run by one Iggy van Zant. Iggy’s old-school and skated with the Z-Boys, but got out before going pro and now lays low for reasons explained later on.
After proving yourself to him, he lets you crash at the Ranch and the task quickly becomes collecting bits and pieces from around all of LA for Mindy’s idea of a dream park. The fusion of urban landmarks and skateable lines means everything from the Hollywood sign to chunks of an offshore oil derrick can all be turned into one of the coolest level designs I’ve ever seen Neversoft whip up. And you get to see it slowly built piece by piece.
