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Tony Hawks American Wasteland – Review
Its 2005, of course there is a Tony Hawks game available for your brand-new Xbox 360. Dose the 7th console generation give the birdman the love his games deserve?........Not really.
THAW as I will now refer to it as is the first skating game of the 7th console gen. Released on all major platforms at the time it follows on from Underground 2, a game that was praised for its gameplay but many felt did not reach the hights of Underground 1. Thaw leans more into Underground 2’s tropes. The story revolves around your custom skater trying to make it big in L.A., you quickly meet a quirky bunch of skaters who are looking to build the ultimate skatepark, the “American Wasteland”. To do this you go from level to level collecting structures to build up your skatepark. The story is serviceable but nothing memorable, the voice acting is terrible, and because of this the characters are forgettable. It leans heavily into the silliness of Underground 2 rather than the more “realistic” tone of underground 1.
The big change this year is the “open world” aspect, levels are set out like your typical tony hawks’ levels, but with shops to by boards and clothes with NPCs giving out quests and objectives. The open world works by linking these levels together with linier corridors hiding loading screens. It works well, and you could in theory do one massive combo around the entire game which is a cool new feature. The level design is more it and miss than previous games, many feel very similar with a couple of standouts. There is also a classic mode here that brings back a number of levels from previous games, which is a nice change of pace. The online is sadly no longer available but was good fun back in the day.
New gameplay features are present, with an ability to slow down time with a full special to improve the number of tricks you can pull off. This is the best version of Tony Hawks from a gameplay standpoint, everything here feels tight and efficient.
For a 360 game, THAW looks really poor, it runs in 720p compared to 480i on ps2 and gamecube, and 480p on Xbox. If you’re coming here from the Xbox version, you’ll hardly notice a difference, the framerate is 60fps regardless of version. It in fact looks worse than Underground 2, character models especially looks really bad. Weather they have had to do this to implement the open world, I don’t know but its easily the worse looking launch title on the 360.
Overall THAW swings and hits more than it misses, but its more of a slight refinement of Underground 2, rather than a next gen skate game.
Rating: 6.5/10
Its 2005, of course there is a Tony Hawks game available for your brand-new Xbox 360. Dose the 7th console generation give the birdman the love his games deserve?........Not really.
THAW as I will now refer to it as is the first skating game of the 7th console gen. Released on all major platforms at the time it follows on from Underground 2, a game that was praised for its gameplay but many felt did not reach the hights of Underground 1. Thaw leans more into Underground 2’s tropes. The story revolves around your custom skater trying to make it big in L.A., you quickly meet a quirky bunch of skaters who are looking to build the ultimate skatepark, the “American Wasteland”. To do this you go from level to level collecting structures to build up your skatepark. The story is serviceable but nothing memorable, the voice acting is terrible, and because of this the characters are forgettable. It leans heavily into the silliness of Underground 2 rather than the more “realistic” tone of underground 1.
The big change this year is the “open world” aspect, levels are set out like your typical tony hawks’ levels, but with shops to by boards and clothes with NPCs giving out quests and objectives. The open world works by linking these levels together with linier corridors hiding loading screens. It works well, and you could in theory do one massive combo around the entire game which is a cool new feature. The level design is more it and miss than previous games, many feel very similar with a couple of standouts. There is also a classic mode here that brings back a number of levels from previous games, which is a nice change of pace. The online is sadly no longer available but was good fun back in the day.
New gameplay features are present, with an ability to slow down time with a full special to improve the number of tricks you can pull off. This is the best version of Tony Hawks from a gameplay standpoint, everything here feels tight and efficient.
For a 360 game, THAW looks really poor, it runs in 720p compared to 480i on ps2 and gamecube, and 480p on Xbox. If you’re coming here from the Xbox version, you’ll hardly notice a difference, the framerate is 60fps regardless of version. It in fact looks worse than Underground 2, character models especially looks really bad. Weather they have had to do this to implement the open world, I don’t know but its easily the worse looking launch title on the 360.
Overall THAW swings and hits more than it misses, but its more of a slight refinement of Underground 2, rather than a next gen skate game.
Rating: 6.5/10