Games

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

Funny to think that just over five years ago, Tony Hawk Pro Skater was a fresh-faced and exciting new entry into the gaming world, a hip and groovy innovator that wowed us with its potential.

The series still has a certain hip cachet, but there's no denying that it's starting to look a little long in the tooth, a middle-aged punk rocker trying to convince the kids he's still a rebel.

2003's Tony Hawk's Underground opened up the environment and finally removed the nails that magically held the skateboard to your feet, allowing you to dismount and run, jump and climb to new areas, but THUG2 saw the series losing sight of what made it special - with cars, bikes and silly challenges it almost felt like skateboarding had taken a backseat.

That problem has been addressed for this second reboot (of sorts) with the focus firmly back on skating skills, with a BMX as an optional mode of transport for those who are so inclined. The other big selling point is the elimination of loading times, promising the chance to skate from one end of LA to another with no breaks.

That stretches the truth a bit, but we'll come to that later.

The story mode lets you take a wannabe skater from the mid-west through his trial by fire in Los Angeles, trying to make it as a pro skater. Guided through a world of subculture stereotypes by a token sexy skate chick, whose indie comic gives the game both its title and its Robert Crumb/Harvey Pekar visual style.

You meet new people, learn new tricks and must continue to impress the inhabitants of LA's skater crowd with your skills. For anyone who has played a Tony Hawk game before, this part is both shallow and irritating. Forcing players to master the most basic tricks before continuing is almost as annoying as the constant driving tests in each new Gran Turismo game. This sort of feature should have been relegated to a seperate training mode long ago.

There aren't many new tricks added to the repertoire this time around, so experienced players will fly through these challenges without much hassle, and the payoff - the building of a new grungey skatepark - is a weak reward for a series that offered a fully-featured park designer years ago. There's also an increased Sims/GTA influence as well, with shops aplenty to alter the clothing, haircut and tattoos of your character.

And as for the trumpeted "no loading" feature... well, it cheats a tad. New areas of the map are reached by skating down a tunnel, and it's rather obvious that as you grind and manual your way down this pipe, the game is loading the next map. You can also ride the bus, but that removes even the basic act of skating to new areas, and is thus only for people who don't like skating - and they're hardly likely to be playing the new Tony Hawk game, are they?

Graphically the game is still stuck somewhere in the middle of the PS2's evolution. It looks mostly nice, occasionally great, but there are still flickers and quirks that betray a game engine long since due an overhaul. Your skater will vanish into the scenery, or bounce along at impossible angles, and while it's easily forgiven, it diminishes the franchise's reputation.

The free skate mode, and a vastly improved online multiplayer option, will be where most experienced players will find their money's worth - though there's little here they won't have already seen before.

By Dan Whitehead