Sometimes, it's a wonder how Neversoft keeps on topping themselves. Year to year, the studio continues to add onto the multimillion-selling Tony Hawk series that has given them a license to print money. We've seen pro skaters; we've seen street kids go from nobody to big man on the block; and now, the zero-to-hero story that drove the last two entries gets a new makeover with Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (or THAW, as some have called it). I got some hands-on time with it last week in San Francisco, and suffice it to say, there's something for both old-school Tony Hawk's Pro Skater fans (myself included) and Tony Hawk's Underground converts.

Taking place in Los Angeles, the mecca of American skate culture, THAW will allow players to start from a total nobody fresh off the Greyhound, to The Man in a plot-driven storyline reminiscent of the Underground series. Here, however, equal emphasis has been put on straightforward skating, more so than on the goofy hijinks that seemed to have cemented with last year's Jackass-themed THUG 2.

The presentation takes upon the qualities of a graphic novel thanks to artwork by the legendary artist Jimbo Phillips. The soundtrack, in appropriately diverse fashion, features artists ranging from Alkaline Trio and Black Flag to Prefuse 73 and Felix da Housekat. All around, it's appropriate for the grittier feel that the series has been honing since THUG's inception two years ago.


I got to tinker with story mode for an hour, sampling gameplay and getting a feel for what's different. As someone who's been playing the series since the beginning, I've been highly critical of the direction that the series has gone towards with the Underground games, especially the last game, which while good, had just a little too much Bam Margera for my taste. After roughly sixty minutes of play across a few different consoles, I left the event feeling confident that Neversoft seems to have found a compromise between THUG's story-driven modes and THPS's highly goal-oriented gameplay.

When story mode fires up, the player gets to pick a look from a small group of different pre-made would-be skaters -- it would be nice to have a larger range to choose from, though, although it might be too late to tweak at this point. The chosen character hops on a bus and makes his way to LA, where he's jacked immediately for his gear. It's there that players encounter Mindy, the hip and sassy tour guide/would-be love interest who walks them through the inner trappings of the City of Angels' skate culture and sends him clothes shopping. What makes everything so interesting though, is the way that Neversoft has taken a page out of Metroid Prime and put players out on the streets with no skills.