Tony Hawk's American Wasteland Xbox 360 Video Game Review

One has to wonder what has happened to the Tony Hawk series as of late. The series began dying out, so Activision put out it's Underground game, a refreshing new addition that was fun to play yet featured too many similarities to previous installments. THUG 2 was just more repetition that caused almost endless boredom. However, this negligence is greatly overshadowed by Tony Hawk's first foray onto the Xbox 360, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland.

The fact that the game can be played in high resolution truly only makes the games flaws, including its terrible graphics and sloppy animations, all the more apparent. Can Activision truly be any more lazy? One would figure that they would at least try to make a solid first appearance on next-gen consoles, however that is not so. Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, or THAW for short, really should have been thawed out prior to its release, since it will leave gamers feeling nothing but icy resentment towards the game.

The main factor contributing to how bad the game truly is lies in the game's graphics engine. Similarly to Activision's other game on the Xbox 360, Gun, THAW looks exactly the same on the Xbox 360 as it does on its current-gen counterparts (noticing a trend here from Activision yet?). How hard can it really be to at least re-work the graphics somewhat to at least make it look like it fits on the Xbox 360? Why did they even release the game at all on next-gen if they wanted to make it look so bad? Questions that will never be answered, of course.

These graphical failures lie in the fact that THAW uses the same exact graphics engine as its Xbox and PS2 counterpart. The same exact graphics engine as its predecessors, THUG and THUG 2. For that matter, the same exact graphics engine that was used in the old Tony Hawk games. Yes, friends, that is why the graphics look so terrible. The graphics engine might as well be from the 90's. Sure, it has been improved somewhat along the way, but that doesn't make the game look any better.