Tony Hawk American Wasteland (simply THAW from now on) sees the series return to the more recognisable pastures of the Tony Hawk series. Gone is the MTV inspired craziness of THUG2 (XBW:82%), gone are the vehicles of THUG (XBW:88%), and in its place we have a few more new moves plus BMX biking ala Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX. Whilst all elements of the entire series are still retained, the biggest addition for Xbox gamers is Xbox Live! online play.

The series has always been known for its great presentation, but this time it's been upped a notch by the inclusion of art by famous Santa Cruz artist Jimbo Philips. The name might not be familiar to those unfamiliar with the skate scene, but those of us with even a passing interest in skating, surfing and the associated scene will be very familiar with Jimbo's wacky, intense yet funny artwork. Jimbo's art shows up in cut scenes which tell the story of a young country boy (you - and you only get a choice of 5 template skaters to begin with which is disappointing) who makes his way to LA to make it big on the skate circuit. Once he arrives, he's robbed by some skate thugs, but befriended by punk chick Mindy, who helps him get his stuff back. In return, the skater boy promises to help Mindy get her skate ‘zine ‘American Wasteland' published.

Along the way you get to help a bunch of misfits build a skate park, called the Skate Ranch, rescue someone from jail, and impress the pro scene skaters such as Tony Hawk and Tony Alva. There are a few twists and turns to the story, which will take a fair while to complete, and although it's better thought out than the story in THUG2, I don't think it will win any literary awards anytime soon.

The gameplay of THAW hasn't altered too much from the paradigm set up in THUG. You skate up to people with Stars over their head, and they will give you goals to achieve in order to progress the story. Most of these involve tricking off certain items in the map to proceed to the next goal. All the old tricks are available, and if you know the series you won't have any problems performing them. The key to most goals is to perform the tricks called out, or gets the highest possible score in a combo. New tricks include rolls, off the board skills, and old skate tricks pioneered by the Dog Town Z Boys. Rolls are where you spin your entire body when in the air, and they look cool although they're quite difficult to pull off. The off-the board skills involve wall climbing and flipping off walls. The old school moves include the Natas spin which is spinning on a pivot, and the Bert Slide, which is where you put your hand on the ground and pivot on your hand, much like how surfers touch the wave when surfing.

Something that is different is that you can now skate from one side of world to the other without seeing any loading screens. This makes the game world seem much more cohesive and it's a lot of fun skating and tricking from one area of LA to another, although it's not exactly like a GTA world. For example, it's possible to skate from Hollywood to East LA, but there's only one specific route to skate. With the areas you can choose to skate and trick your way through the world, or you can take a bus or ride in a car, which is faster but not nearly as fun. There's a bit of slowdown in the connecting area tunnels, but it's barely noticeable. Each area is locked initially, and you have to complete certain goals to unlock them. The areas are quite large, and feature multiple levels of play space - you can grind and switch to higher areas in all the areas, and whilst there are not many actual "hidden areas" to be found as in previous games, there are many areas which are accessible only if you trick correctly to reach them. The streaming world allows a new type of multi-level goals, where you have to go to two or more different areas to complete a gaol. For example, you have to scare the Carnie over in Santa Monica by buying a costume from a Hollywood skate store.

Once you unlock the Skate Ranch, usually the story goal will involve tricking off something in the environment causing it to crash or smash, and then the item will be transported to the Skate Ranch, where you're encouraged to make a big score off of it in some way. This is a little different to the THUG series where the goal was just to cause destruction and open up new areas of the maps. This does happen in THAW, although not to such a great extent. It pays to go directly to the Ranch as you unlock an item for it; otherwise you may get overwhelmed and lost amongst all the new pieces. Although it is nice to have an area purely for skating, I found this are to be a little cluttered at times, and harder to find the trick lines than the smoother, more ordered city block areas of Hollywood and Beverly Hills.

The BMX is a new feature and replaces the vehicles found in THUG. Whilst the controls are similar to the skateboard, the bike does have different physics and some different tricks. For example, you use the triggers as the front and rear breaks. And yes, you can flip the bike by applying too much pressure to the front break at too high a speed. Tricks are pulled off using the same face buttons as skateboarding, as well as the Right Joystick to do further BMX specific moves, such as tail whips and crank tricks. The bike isn't used a great deal in the story, but is a lot of fun to ride - much better than the vehicles in the previous games, and by finding the guy with the bike icon above his head and performing certain tricks, you can make money to customise your skater.

Classic mode returns with classic maps from the entire Tony Hawk series, and like in THUG, this is a welcome addition to the game as it extends the gameplay greatly. This time Co-operative Mode on classic allows two players to try and achieve the goals in the two-minute time limit together, but it is limited to 2 players. In addition to these modes, all the usual Multiplayer of the Tony Hawk game are included such as Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Slap!, Combo Mambo, Firefight, and a new one called Pot ‘o Gold, - a person who is "it" scores points until they are hit by another player, who then becomes "it". And also the Create-A- modes make a welcome return, allowing you to customise your online skater, create tricks, new graffiti tags, and skateparks. Unfortunately you can't take your parks and share them online, which is a shame.

Xbox Live play makes a welcome entry into THAW. Like all live games, it's really easy to set up and host, and a breeze to find games via optimatch, but the lobby system isn't nearly as cool as Halo 2. You can have up to 8 players playing the games, and the options include three extra multiplayer modes available - Elimiskate, Goal Attack and Capture the Flag. Elimiskate is like trick attack, but the person with the lowest score at the end of the round is eliminated. Goal Attack is like playing classic mode against other people - the person to score the most goals like collect the Videos, or find the letters SKATE, etc - wins. Not knowing the maps makes this mode a little more difficult for n00bs, so my advice it to practice in Classic mode first. Capture the Flag is fun, but I have difficulty finding players as Elimiskate seems to be the most popular game on Live. Playing it I experienced a little bit of lag, but never enough to really cause concern. Sometimes the lag will cause you to do utterly weird things, like change direction in mid air, but it never seemed to actually interrupt the flow of the game to any great detriment. So unlike other games, you can't really blame the lag on your bad skating and combo skills. Overall the Live experience is just like playing with a friend who's physically there, and is great fun, and a great break from all the shooters and driving games.

Apart from the cool artwork of Jimbo Philips, THAW doesn't really boggle the mind with its graphics. The levels are colourful, but the detail is lacking in the skater models. There are certain times where graphic and animation glitches occur, especially when on the bike and you end up in an unusual position the animation will freak out and you'll see your skater spin or jump around in place, but these occur fairly infrequently. There are some cool animations though, and the breakdance move is a classic, especially when you do it in the alien costume. There are a few reflections and some mild lighting effects when the world changes from day to night, but overall the quality isn't great and there's nothing here for the Xbox that can't be done on the PS2. On smaller televisions you may also find the menus very hard to read, especially from a distance.

The music is, as always, top notch. The game kicks off with Dead Kennedy's Holiday in Cambodia, which made me rate the game highly right from the beginning. The soundtrack is full of old and new punk, hiphop and rock, and of course you can have your own soundtracks, but there was never I moment when I thought the music was repetitive or boring. The dialogue is a little less top notch, with some scenes the game pausing a little too long when loading the next line, making it seem very much like the lines were read rather than acted. There doesn't seem to be too much emotion in the readings either, but it's never enough so you want to mute the game.