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Every time Activision and Neversoft announce a new game in the Tony Hawk series, it becomes harder to believe that they’ll be able to keep it fresh, and yet, every time they release the game, they somehow manage to do it. Pro Skater was the best skateboarding game ever conceived, and Underground improved upon nearly element of that series, and now Neversoft has come along with their newest recreation of the Hawk franchise: American Wasteland. Will you be able to stomach yet another installment in this skating franchise? Yes, yes you will.

American Wasteland handles similarly to the Underground games, and has a similar feel when it comes to certain aspects. The one major similarity is that you’ll be taking a created (somewhat) skater who’s an unknown, and pushing him to the cream of the crop of the skating world by completing various challenges and tasks throughout the games world. Unlike the previous games in the Hawk series, this one boasts quite the cast of characters that get involved in the overall story of the game, too.

Mindy is the first and most important person you meet in American Wasteland. Your character leaves home and hops a bus to California to make it big in the skating circle, but when he gets jumped outside of the bus in Cali, and his belongings are stolen, it’s Mindy that teaches you the basic tricks of the trade and helps you get your stuff back. Down the road, she’s also the character that helps you meet up with some of the games more important characters.

The story is pretty simple, but surprisingly involved at the same time. After you get your stuff back, you are introduced to the skate ranch, which, when you start out, is essentially a landfill rotting in a corner of California. One of the main goals in the game is to obtain new pieces for said skate ranch, and eventually open the sickest skate park the state has ever seen. Getting pieces for the ranch takes up the majority of the story mode, as you’ll be doing favors for different characters, or causing a bit of mayhem to obtain pieces. One of the early pieces you’ll get is a Dinosaur head, and while they aren’t always as off the wall as that, they’re always pretty sweet and by the end of the game, you have one sick park to skate around in. If you’re creative enough, there are massive combos to be found in there.

One of the most advertised elements of American Wasteland is that there are no load times, and the entire game is streamed. While this is technically true, it’s also kinda not. The way the game cheats the load screens is by making small tunnel-like areas that link each major piece of California to each other. These include, but are not limited to underground parking lots and mall hallways. The tunnel areas are slim and linear, and include only the smallest amount of trick-able items, such as rails and a fountain or two. When you obtain a new piece to the ranch, you’re invited to jump right back to the ranch, and if you select to do so, the game switches to a scene of your character driving inside a car. While the screen doesn’t have the word ‘loading’ on it, it’s still technically a loading screen. I will say, though, the seamless experience is pretty sweet overall, and I can’t wait until we get some true free roam from the Hawk man.

American Wasteland, in a way, is a back to basics for the Hawk series. If you’ve played the 2 Underground titles, you’ll know what I mean once you play Wasteland. This is the first title in the series since the Pro Skater line that requires you to earn new tricks and abilities as you move on in the story mode. As you’ll notice from the goals and tasks assigned during the game, everything is much more skateboarding oriented, and much less destruction and running around, like Underground 2; a welcome change, for sure.

That’s not to say skateboarding is all there is to do in American Wasteland, as indeed it is not. If the large, seamless areas weren’t enough for you, Neversoft has thrown in the ability to pick up and ride a BMX bike at any time into the game. The BMX stuff isn’t as fun as the skating portion of the title, but it’s still pretty sweet that it’s included, and the fact that everything is really well done, and not just thrown together makes it and even better deal. To sweeten things even further, you’re only required to hop on a BMX for a very short period of time in the story, and anything else is up to you.

Compared to the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox versions of Wasteland, the 360 version is obviously the prettiest of the bunch, but once you put it side by side with games like Condemned, or even Activision’s own Call of Duty 2, it stops looking so pretty. This isn’t to say Wasteland is an ugly title by any means, it’s just very much obvious that this is a port of a current gen game. The title is still good looking, and some of the elements of the game have better texture detailing than the current gen versions, and the graphics are overall a lot sharper.

Now, I know this is just my opinion, but I personally couldn’t stand the soundtrack this time around. It’s a total love it or hate it deal here. Incredibly popular bands like My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy headline the extensive set list for Wasteland, and while a ton of gamers are going to dig the soundtrack, I just can’t stand the whole emo craze everyone seems to be going through, and therefore, I downloaded the soundtrack to the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and now play American Wasteland to that… aaah, Suicide Machines, how I’ve missed you.

After being reinvented 3 times now, the Tony Hawk series is 7 titles strong and still seems to be going full steam ahead. The levels are well planned and offer some excellent lines to skate, and the skate park you help build in story mode is one of the coolest additions to the series in quite some time now. I don’t know how Neversoft does it, but even as a veteran Hawk player, I can tell I’m going to be enjoying Wasteland for many months to come. If you haven’t already included this in your list of games to get, do so.