Tony Hawk's American Wasteland [GC]

Many moons ago back on the original PlayStation, Neversoft sort of came out of nowhere and delivered what was easily one of the best extreme sports games ever made in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The beauty of the game was not only its dead-perfect controls, but that such a niche sport like skateboarding could be translated so well to a videogame and find resounding consumer and critical success as a result.

Neversoft has been delivering updates to the series on a basically yearly schedule since then, with the series changing from the Pro Skater moniker after the fourth title and switching over to Tony Hawk's Underground. While the past two Underground titles focused more on tomfoolery and general destruction, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland sees the series return to its purer skateboarding-oriented roots. The game very much seems to put the focus back into the elements of skating itself, which longtime Tony Hawk fans will certainly appreciate.

The game starts out with your chosen character hopping on a bus and heading to Los Angeles where skateboarding thrives and skaters aren't the bane of the law that they are elsewhere. You'll quickly run into Mindy, a local skater-chick who helps you learn the layout of the city, meet some other important NPCs, explain how the skate shops work and so on and so forth. From there you'll meet up with some skating legends and begin to build your name amongst the greats. It's not Citizen Kane, but it works.

Step 1: Lure Roadrunner Into Acme Rocket American Wasteland's goal structure and story progression feels sort of like a combination of THPS4 and the two THUG games. Like the Underground games, there's an actual background story that you're working through, which starts out with your skater basically wanting to prove himself to the local thrashers in Los Angeles. These main story-oriented goals are usually given to you by Mindy or one of the other major characters in the game, though there are a whole slew of side goals that you can opt to take. For example, roaming drunks will challenge you to perform a series of tricks in a certain amount of time for some cash, which you now need to purchases clothes, haircuts, boards and such.

While longtime fans of the Tony Hawk series have become "one" with the franchise's control scheme, able to pull off a 720 Christ Air in their sleep, the Tony Hawk games actually employ a fairly complicated and deep control setup. From manuals to lip stalls to reverts and more, the amount of moves available to players is incredibly large, and new players may find the overall control system a little complicated at first.

Because of this, Neversoft essentially starts you with the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater move set, basically only giving you access to grabs, flip tricks and grinds at the start of the game. This list quickly expands though, where various folks around the city will quickly teach you how to perform the series' other fundamental moves. For example, one of the first skaters you'll meet explains how manuals work and has you ride one out for a short distance. Old players will be able to fly through these challenges in only a few minutes and have access to the series' full move set quite quickly, while new players will learn each move one at a time, greatly helping level out the learning curve.

Like every other title in the series has done before it, American Wasteland adds to the series' already massive list of moves. For example, you now have the ability to string together different Natas Spin moves, similar to the land-based combo strings introduced in THPS4. You're now also able to stall not only on lips but rails as well. And as an addition for hardcore skaters, Neversoft added the ability to perform a Tail Tap on quarter and half-pipes.

The on-foot action has been expanded, as well. You're now able to run up walls, perform flips and more, giving you the ability to reach more places without your skateboard than before. While the off-board elements of the series has been less than perfect in the past, Neversoft has tweaked your character's sneaker time controls as well as the camera, making for much easier control when on-foot. The game is still best when you're on your board of course, but it's quite nice that this aspect of the series has been tweaked, tightened and improved upon.