User Reviews (1 - 7 of 7)

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Believe It

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: March 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

At the time of writing this, there are 2 hard hitting reviews of this game by Mike and John from California. They are both 100% right in the scope that they chose to address, but I feel - as rough as they were - they were actually being very polite...probably in respect for a game that once was and once could have been.

The oncoming of the THUG series was, in my opinion, a serious lapse in judgement in consideration for the tastes and intellect of the average THPS enthusiast. The games were, at best, depressing in nature (deceit, vandalism, revenge) and insulting to the intelligence of the user.

But as bad as those games were, they warm the cockles of my heart compared to THAW. It's as if they said to a market test group "What are all the things you despise about the new THUG line?" and took the answers and cranked those irritating features up three notches. Not even the most destructive and anti-social teen could be as blandly and patently despising of the human race as some of the characters in this game. AND, no one in the world wants to play the world's longest satellite radio commercial.

If you still don't believe us, go right ahead - but let me just say welcome back when you find yourself right here writing your own review - trying to convince someone else to avoid buying this at retail for PC.

THAW goes THUD

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland for the PC takes the series further into the bad taste of THUG2 while going backwards in terms of Level Design and Coding.

For all of the annoying Vandalism and general Chaos that THUG2 glorified, THAW does it even more. It's story is as uninspired as the previous release, but this time adding in more mindless anti-corporate rhetoric, destruction, and causing harm for kids to enjoy. If this were the only problem with the game, I could probably let it slide, but it's just one of the things I've found to be terrible about how the series has been heading.

None of the PC ports of Tony Hawk games have been great, but this one takes the cake for having terrible performance. In the commercial for the game, Tony gets stopped by an invisible wall that says "Loading"... well... now your Skater just gets stopped in long hallways that connect the fairly small skating areas. Granted, there isn't a loading bar, but you will experience lots of slow down and pauses while in the transition "hallways" even on systems that are well above the recommended specs.

That brings up something else that was misleading... it's not just one big area to skate in. They promoted it as being L.A., however what you get is areas that are pretty much just like the previous games in the series take on cities. You get 1 to 3 city blocks worth of area to skate in, and then the hallway.

Challenges range from alright to outright awful. It has a terrible habit of making you repeat a move three times for challenges that span nearly the entire game, which has the effect of making it seem like one giant tutorial level.

Graphics are poor, to put it mildly. The models for skaters look freakish, animations rarely stay synched with audio, and many textures look like they are suited to a PS1 version of the game. The cut-scene animations are decent enough, no real noticable motion capture errors that you usually see in the form of shaking body parts.

Controls are fairly standard fair for Tony Hawk, but since you will likely be dealing with random pauses every few seconds in the game, it can make any trick attempt very frustrating. The addition of a large amount of BMX challenges was decent enough, but it is all starting to feel very dated. The old arcade feel and lack of physics on the board/bike tends to get old quickly.

Unless there is a major overhaul of the series, I can't see a reason to buy another Tony Hawk game. From the awful portrayal of the Skater lifestyle (essentialy a sociopathic criminal in THAW and THUG2) to the non-evolving level design (still feels just like the original PS1 game) and the visuals of last generations graphics, there isn't much new to enjoy.

Don't buy it, waste of money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: March 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I couldn't even get this game to work properly. I have a high end system with a $400 video card and this game lags!! I can play Doom 3 on high settings but not a Tony Hawk game?

Secondly, this game is way too easy even on the sick difficulty. Half the game was spent earning basic abilities like Manual and Spine Transfer and the rest of the time was spent trying to impress the local bums who give YOU money to do such simple things as Kickflips and 2000 point combos! Every once in a while you'll get a real mission to do but it usually something very simple and last all but 30 seconds. This whole game is beatable in two hours if you skip all the side missions and just do the main goals.

Thirdly, classic mode is incredibly weak. There's only 6 levels! Beat that in one hour as well.

In conclusion: If you must purchase this game buy a used copy. Get it for the PS2 or XBOX instead of PC because this one blows.

Fear and Loathing in Direct Ports

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: May 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is very typical of alot of the PC games coming out. It's a direct port from a console game to a PC game with very little change. The controls are extremely confusing. It instructs you to "Perform X trick by hitting the G and R key" but they don't mean the actual G and R key but rather the G and R key on whatever damn console they designed the thing on. To make this worse when you assign keys to diffrent controls it doesn't say G = ________ but rather "Ollie Tricks (Jump)". To add insult to injury on that score you cannot change key bindings from within the game. You have to close the game, use the program launcher to specify a new key, then enter the game and try it, then exit out again to change a diffrent key or rebind that action.

Another problem alot of people are having with this game is lag. In story mode it gets to a place and hangs... from anything from 5 seconds to 30 seconds and above. To make this even more frustrating is that alot of the time the lag hits in the same place where you have to perform a trick. While your trying to do pinpoint splitsecond key sequences, the game hangs for 30 seconds in the middle of your trick... it gets frustrating fast.

All things bieng equal if you want to buy a Tony Hawk game I'd suggest you buy Tony Hawk's Underground 2 instead. It has much less lag, much easier to navigate menus, as well as looking graphically better.

Controls are confusing...so they say.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: June 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

As i'm sure you have noticed, all the controls on the menu and in some parts of the game of THAW are labelled G=back, O=select etc. Many different reviewers are getting angry because of this inconvenience but if you just think about it, it's all quite simple.G=Grind button, O=Ollie button, R=Rail button and so on. The reason they don't put "keypad 5=ollie(or select)" is that you can change these settings in the "launch" area in the beginning of the game and that would make it very confusing.Many people do nat change these settings but if you've played previous tony hawk games, some of the controls are different and you are already used to them.In THUG 2 the ollie button is KP2 so i'm used to that and i changed it.

This game isn't that bad overall but the only problem for me is the amount of CLASSIC MODE levels. There's only six!!!!

Don't listen to the others

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: April 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Overall this is a pretty fun and well made game. I think that the other rewiewers were too critical and took the game to seriously. I read those rewiews before purchasing but went ahead and bought it anyway, since I've been anticipating it a long time. Before playing, make sure to install "DirectX9.0c" when it prompts you to on the very first screen you see. Also, although I have an expensive computer with a good graphics card, the game would always lag on the "very high" 1280X1024 screen resolution setting.

The first thing I noticed was that the menus were confusing to navigate because the on-screen instructions said G=back,O=select,... However, the contols really are keypad5= select,KP6=back,KP4=talk to a person or pick up bike/throw skate board. When I first played it, I was impressed by the screen resolution, even though it wasn't on high res. I'll admit that the cutscreen animations could be improved, but otherwise there was sharp detail and an interactive environment. I also enjoyed the BMX feature.

The advertisement for this game is misleading. Don't expect a sandbox environment streching for miles around L.A. Although there is no loading, each area is connected by a long hallway that lags as you pass through it.

The other reviewers take this game too seriously. It is fantasy, and isn't made to portray real skate culture or realistic skating. You can find a lot worse on the market, in games such as GTA, GUN, and Getting Up: contents under pressure.

Overall, this game has good music, graphics, and gameplay. Just one question: why are the bums giving you money to do tricks?

Lots of Fun

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I loved this game mainly because of diversity. I don't really feel like going into huge detail since others have already elaborated but I will say this. Buy a gamepad because it actually IS the controls that make the game. I have a logitech rumble pad cordless.

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