The Birdman arrives with a very skate-oriented outing. By Chris Roper Updated: 18 May pm. With what is essentially the third "reinvention" of the series, Pro Skater being the first and Underground being second, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland sees the series shy away from the unfettered destruction focus of the last two games and head back to its pure skateboarding roots. In fact, the game's story mode is based around old-school skaters, building a skatepark from the ground up and basically earning everything from scratch.
Though every other game in the series has allowed you to take a created character into the main story mode, American Wasteland starts you with a selection of one of five characters, and takes you into LA to begin a hopefully progressive skating career. After meeting Mindy, who basically becomes your tutor and guide of sorts for the rest of the game, the first two tasks that you're required to do are to get a new haircut and pick out some new clothes.
You can also wander into the local skateshop to pick out a new deck, but you'll need to wait until you're a bit further in the game to come across accessory stores for sunglasses, backpacks and such or tattoo parlors.
While you can essentially outfit your character anyway you want over time, being as you're forced to pick from one of five character choices at the start of the game and then modify them as the game goes on, you're not given the same amount of control over your character's look as you've had in the past. The Tony Hawk series has always had a really good character creator so it's somewhat disappointing that you can't take advantage of it for the Story mode.
You can use your fully original characters in the Free Skate and Classic modes of course, just not in the Story mode. At any rate, the main drive behind the game is your relationship with a group of local LA skaters, its leader, who happens to be a skating legend, and their running ground called Skate Ranch.
Much of the game's goals revolve around either directly helping this group of characters in some way or earning pieces for Skate Ranch. When you first arrive at the ranch, it looks something like a rundown skatepark built on a landfill.
A fair bit of the game's main story goals revolve around collecting various objects, big and small, from the sections of LA in order to outfit Skate Ranch proper.
You'll collect things like dinosaur heads, broken sections of the street, pieces of hangers and so forth. It's kind of a cool progression in that if you continuously visit it throughout the game, you'll essentially be able to skate on the progress you've made.
The end result of Skate Ranch is that it turns into somewhat of a littered skatepark, but one with a whole slew of different ramps, rails to hit and so on and so forth. If you take your sweet time in returning to the ranch after you've collected a bunch of stuff, the place may seem rather foreign and may actually be reasonably hard to navigate as you won't really know how it's laid out anymore. Skate Ranch is a cool addition to the series, and something of an idea that might be cool in future titles, especially if you could place the collected pieces where you want, like in the Park Editor.
As a whole, the story, attitude and overall focus of the game is much better this time around than what we've seen from the two THUG games.
The series' return to the purer elements of skateboarding is a welcome one, and being as there are very few missions that don't require a skateboard, this is what we like to see.
Streaming, but no GTA One of the major features that American Wasteland has been pimped as having is a streaming environment where it's possible to skate from one side of LA to the other without stopping, and even pulling off one major combo if you're good enough. While this is a true statement, it's not exactly what it sounds like. Los Angeles is broken into smaller areas, or levels if you will, that individual goals are set in. These areas are connected via loading tunnels, which do indeed include things to trick off of, but aren't full environments.
For example, the tunnel that connects Beverly Hills to Skate Ranch is modeled like something of a large sewer system or aqueduct, filled with pipes, wires and so forth to grind as you make your way to the ranch. On the one hand, it's cool that you're never really presented with a load screen once you're in the game, but on the other hand, it's not exactly what everyone originally thought it would be.
It does help with the goal system however, as you can easily tell which level something needs to be completed in rather than having to figure out which city block you need to focus on. Even though the areas are essentially broken up as levels, you don't work through them in a linear fashion like the previous games.
New areas connect to past ones, and goals will continue to pop up in every section of the game. If you need to skip a large area of the city to get to your next goal, you can just hop on a bus and then pick from any bus-accessible area. You won't be able to travel directly to Skate Ranch for instance, as that isn't on the bus route, but you'll be able to stop off at Beverly Hills and then wonder over quite quickly.
The individual areas in the game are designed in classic Tony Hawk fashion in that they're representative of the feel of an area of LA and contain various landmarks and such, with all of this squished into a Tony Hawk-sized level. You win the AMJAM, however, whilst making a short speech, you tell Tony Hawk that the last trick you performed was taught to you by Iggy Van Zandt , who, unknown to you, is living in total secrecy in the ranch, as his crime rate is somewhat extensive according to Mindy.
Causing him to be arrested by the police. Mindy then suggest you talk to the Z-Boys, the only other group Iggy has hung out with, about what to do. So you then meet skating legend Tony Alva, from who you find out that Iggy's skate ranch is actually " Green Pipes Point ," a legendary snake run that got leveled many years ago.
You decide it has to be dug up, and befriend Alva's friend Mega, who runs an oil rig just off Santa Monica. He recently dropped out of the gang but was jumped and is now missing in East LA. You join the Widows by impressing them with your spray painting, skating and BMX skills to get to East LA and save Boone , who was trapped in a sewer pipe. After some time, you get a phone call from Iggy in jail, who explains his bail will be with him shortly. You tell him you found out about Green Pipes Point and that it is being dug up, expecting an ecstatic response from Iggy.
However, Iggy hates what you have done, because he didn't own the land, and if "the owner finds out what a badass skatepark he has, he'll cash in on the place. Shortly after, you receive a text message from Mega saying that stuff is happening at the ranch. Upon arriving in Beverly Hills , the game cuts to a news report, which is about the revival of Green Pipes Point , showing pros and locals being very happy.
Outside the ranch, you see the owner, Shapiro , in an expensive car, and ask why he sold it, being so legendary. The soon-to-be-ex owner doesn't care, and rides off with a snobbish attitude, pleased of his new money. Iggy arrives with a baseball bat, and starts hitting the ranch's gate in rage. You try to apologize, but it doesn't matter to Iggy. Iggy says that it'll never be his place thanks to you.
You seem to snap, and tell him that "It could've been if you hadn't been sitting on your ass all these years waiting for someone else to bail you out! You, Murphy , Dave and Boone decide to start a project to save the ranch, by making a skate video featuring famous pros, with all the proceeds going to Green Pipes Point. You then round up many pros, impressing them with your skills to convince them to feature in the video.
Whilst in East LA ready to demo, film and add skate pieces for the ranch from a bust casino, Iggy arrives, and you two reconcile. He also says that he will feature himself in the video, which the guys predict will make the fans go crazy. Eventually, the buzz of the video has become so big that the ranch can be bought simply with the money from the pre-orders. You all leave the casino, but confronted with a vast array of police cars and helicopters. Your task is to get to the ranch from East LA , without using any public transport or cars.
When you arrive at the ranch successfully, everyone is completely overjoyed, with Iggy saying that the ranch is now his, and to celebrate, he is going throw a party at the ranch, with everyone in town invited. Mindy comes over to you on the vert ramp, and you apologize.
No levels. No load times. Just never-ending action that doesn't stop until you leave the game! Tony Hawk's American Wasteland gives you - for the first time ever in a Hawk game - the freedom to skate, or bike, throughout a rich, expansive open environment. Once you arrive in Los Angeles, the vast city that gave birth to skate culture, the sky's the limit as you progress through the Wasteland story and choose missions that will have you immersed in the action without ever skating the same line twice!
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