Not unlike EA Sports' Madden franchise, the Tony Hawk series has seen many different iterations over the last couple of years. What separates the two, is that most of the time the $50 price tag is proper for the amount of new content that the Tony Hawk games provide, whereas the same is debatable for Madden. This year it seems that both franchises have hit a road block. At least in the 360 versions they have. Madden NFL 06 for the Xbox 360 is seen as a good looking game that happens to be missing several gameplay features that its current generation versions already support. Tony Hawk's American Wasteland suffers in that it doesn't look pretty and it doesn't have any extra features than its original Xbox counterpart. What’s the deal breaker you ask? It costs ten dollars more for absolutely no reason. One could say that its support of high definition resolutions could count for something, but the fact is, there are still an overwhelmingly large percentage of gamers that still play games off of standard televisions. For them, the game is a straight up a rip off. 

Free of the hate it or love it stylings of MTV junkie Bam Margera, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland settles itself in a calmer mood. It still features some wacky situations and over the top moves, but its much closer to the original Underground. In terms of style the game has a punk rock attitude that is outlined by its rock infused soundtrack of bands covering older music. You'll either love the soundtrack or hate it, but one thing is for sure, the storyline of this game can be quite good. The story follows a gang of rebellious teenagers who are trying to preserve the free flowing nature of their neighborhood from a bunch of rich snobs that treasure generic mass production over gritty culture. I admit that the goal of littering the streets with skate ramps and rails instead of making affordable housing for people to live in may seem a bit off but the way their enemies are presented and their drive to maintain the home they love make the situation seem plausible. The story mode basically places you through missions and challenges that range from defacing property to forming your own massive skate park. While some of the missions seem absolutely ridiculous, it’s surprising how skating mechanics can be so well implemented into a story driven video game. The story mode is surprisingly short and this is disappointing because the previous two Underground games seemed to pleasantly drag on longer, but since the game still has its other modes, it can definitely be overlooked to a point.

Aside from the story mode, the game includes a classic mode that harkens back to the series original games where you used to collected letters and video tapes. It looks and sounds a bit primitive by today's standards, but it’s definitely a nostalgic experience that proves story isn't always necessary, especially in a sports game. The popular create a player, board, move and park are back with more options and more room for creativity. The one downside to most of these modes is that aside from showing your friends, you really don't have anywhere to display your work. The Playstation 2 versions of Tony Hawk's Underground series allowed you to bring your parks online and not only upload them for others to play one, but to play in those maps online with other people. In a time where online gaming is being touted as a major gaming component, this lack of accessibility can hurt the game's replayability. There’s only so many times you can show your friends a skate park you made, in each Tony Hawk game. 

Other than that gripe, the game truly does soar online with full Xbox Live support including voice chat and all of the available offline multiplayer modes. Having played both versions of the game I can say that the experience online feels smoother on the Xbox 360. I do fear though that having the same exact online features in both versions of the game is going to end up splitting the communities in half, severely reducing its online longevity. I can't see the game's servers being all that full in a few short months. The game’s multiplayer modes include series favorites like Horse, Trick Attack, the Xbox Live exclusive Capture the Flag and the utterly random Free Skate. None of the modes have been drastically changed from any previous title so if you've played one Tony Hawk game, you should know what to expect on the multiplayer side of things.

In addition to the typical new maneuvers and tricks that each game introduces, the game has included BMX bikes as a secondary way to play. While this may sound like some massive change, its really not. The BMX bikes control and feel very similar to the skateboards, although they do possess their own perks. Its a change, but not a dramatic one. It would have been nice if one were allowed to play a modified story mode just utilizing the bike since this is probably the closest thing we will get to a new Matt Hoffman title.

 

Graphically, Tony Hawk's Underground stands as a relic of the current generation sneaking into a party full of a young, fresh and energetic crowd. On the Xbox, the game looks quite good, even though it’s gone as far as it can. But on the 360, the game single handedly manages to look completely average with little to no graphical improvements aside from a higher texture resolution. On standard television sets, you most likely won't notice a thing and on a high definition screen, it can sometimes look worse when the dusty textures are sharpened up in all their "glory". It’s by no means an ugly game, but at $10 dollars more than its Xbox counterpart, this laziness is simply unacceptable. Not to mention the presence of another misleading feature. The game's advertising has led many to believe the game would be devoid of the typical loading screens all games feature. At first glance that may seem true, but the game still has loading downtime in the form of long hallways or paths that lead you to another level. When you enter these bridging paths, the area is completely devoid of anything of interest or importance (they even look bland). During this time, the game can skip and stutter as the game sneakily tries to load the next area as you grind an endless set of rails. This is what we call poorly cloaked loading diversions, not the elimination of load times. As far as sound goes, as stated before, the music tracks are of acquired taste. The voice acting is pretty good (although sometimes excessively corny) and as always, the sound effects reflect the art of skating (...duh?) very well. The game did give my surround sound system a few troubles but it was a small bump in the road that ended up sounding quite good. 

At $59.99 anyone who doesn't have an original Xbox is being ripped off because they are being charged more money for a game that adds nothing the original version didn't have. For those that already have the game on the Xbox, it’s not even worth anything to take a look at it. It doesn't present anything that could possibly warrant a second purchase. To top it all off, as expected, you can’t play your Xbox version on the 360, so if you want to play it online on the 360, you’re out of luck. Putting pricing aside, Wasteland is a solid entry into a skating series that needs to start evolving. Hopefully on the next title we will see some innovations that only the next generation of gaming technology could produce. Until then, there are better 360 games out there to spend your money on. If you really want to play Wasteland, choose the original Xbox version with no hesitation.