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The touted bert slide is a novelty. It's mentioned in exactly two missions and never spoken of again, which is probably a good thing because it's hard to control and even harder to integrate into combos. However, the grind stall and the improvements for off the board activities are perfect for extending combos to the nth degree, slipping right into the trick system like they were always meant to be there. Even the nat spin got some improvements with new stances, but there's still not enough spots to pull it off. THAW brings back the fantastic wall plant from THUG1...and the horrible sticker slap from THUG2, for no reason I can find. Another thing that puzzles me is the return of focus, not because the game is so brain dead easy that the ability to slow things down to keep your balance is just sucking the marrow of challenge right from the bones, but because it's assigned to one of the stick buttons, which no self respecting THPS player ever touches while grinding (not that they would use focus anyway). Of course, once again there's no way to customize the controls.
Yes, Xbox owner, Neversoft hates you.
But wait! At long last, the Xbox version of a THPS game has true online play. Finally, I can show off my personal skate parks...except unlike the PS2 version custom parks can't be played online. Well, at least I can come up with all kinds of crazy goals and challenge people too...except they removed create-a-goal from all versions of the game. That's right, the second best create option after making your own park is nowhere to be found. But at least you can create lame graffiti tags that you'll never use.
I own a PlayStation 2. You may be thinking why did I make myself suffer with fewer levels, poorer controls, and crippled online options by choosing the Xbox version? Ha, the joke's on PS fanboys because the one thing their precious emotion engine can't manage is custom soundtracks, and for THAW they are desperately needed. I know music is a matter of personal taste, but this game has the worst soundtrack in the history of the universe. Someone dragging their fingernails across a chalkboard for hours on end would be Mozart compared to this collection of high school band dropouts, sounding as if they're smashing their faces into instruments while muttering whatever words cross their minds in cigarette ravaged voices. Hell, even the developers knew it was bad since the default music volume is so low you can barely make it out. I thought THUG2's soundtrack. This is easily a million times worse.
So when it's all said and done, what do we have? Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is a mix of the incredible, the mediocre, and the downright vomit-inducing, served up as a videogame shake that tastes somewhat above average. If they got rid of the elements that have nothing to do with thrashing, and focused solely on skateboarding like the series did before it started to go through all these crazy name changes (and like fans of the series have been clamoring for since THUG), Neversoft would have had one of the best games of the year.
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