Its the best Tony Hawk game since 4 ,but Its trying to hard to attract new players and its relative ease hurts it...
GRAPHICS- The graphics in American Wasteland are good. The shadows of your skaters are great but the animations of them talking not so good and sometimes there is no movement of the mouth when a character is talking. The skaters faces look like the actual skaters but when you get up close they look kinda bad but the actual animations of the skaters skating and running are very nice and there is even some shine to objects like tiles and glass that look really nice. Overall the graphics are good just not great.
SOUND- Once again the soundtrack is amazing as it is in all of the Tony Hawk games. Everything from Punk rock to Hip Hop is here and on the Xbox you can even use your own soudtracks which is nice. The voice acting is also well done but the biggest problem is that all of the audio from skateboarding is the same type of stuff we have heard in the last Tony Hawk games. Now that isnt a terrible thing the sounds do sound great its just there is nothing new in there.
GAMEPLAY- The gameplay is still fantastic and so much fun in this installment of Tony Hawk. The improvements to it are more about the skating and the running(which is actually very good) rather than adding like vehicles and being able to spraypant. You can now do Bert Slides and Bank transfers and a variety of new things off-board such as running up walls. BUT the game is just way too easy and its trying to hard to appeal to new players and its not challenging enough for hardcore players(like me) tho even have a tough time in classic mode on SICK(very hard). But its just so fun to just skate around that it almost makes up for the ease of the game. There is also lots of classic levels in there like The Mall and Chicago so the nostalgia level adds to how much fun the game is. Also the it has a streaming los Angeles city which isnt as you would expect. Its no GTA, each area is divided by long hallway like pasages that load the next area as you skate through them.
ONLINE- The online is probably where the hardcore players are gonna get thier kicks. They can go on and find more hardcore players to try and beat which will keep them coming back for more long after the game is completed 100%. Also for the first time it is LIVE enabled for the Xbox. Im just suprised and dissappointed to see no score keeping or ranking sytem up in affect.
OVERALL- This game is good enough and you should go pick it up but veteran Tony Hawk players and even some new players may be dissappointed with the ease and length of the game. But its just so fun you should at least give it a try especially if you have online for your console.