Enter the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. See, my brother came over one day with this new Tony Hawk game and played it. It looked fun! I picked up the controller and gave it a try and was, well, horrible at first. Sure, it was fun to mess with and stuff, but I didn't see much point. After some time with it, I realized that really long grinds and huge tricks could be really fun. Searching out the area for that perfect grind was cool, but pulling off that grind was incredible. When the THUG series started, I was somewhat disappointed - the series seemed to shift away from the skateboarding roots.

When I heard that American Wasteland had a shift back to the roots of the Pro Skater series and felt less like the THUG series, I jumped at the chance to review it. I am glad I did - the game really feels a lot more like the original series. Sure, there is still the element of walking around in a few places in Story mode, but having a lot of redone retro type levels in the classic mode is awesome. Also, the pseudo-wide open LA is pretty cool, as is the skate ranch.

My favorite mode, though, would still be the classic mode. See, this was the first mode in a Tony Hawk game that I ever played - two minutes of exploring a level, finding the S-K-A-T-E letters, finding the hidden tape, searching for places to do tricks at to pull off the increasing point totals and other goals that varied based on the level were always fun. It was even more fun when you only had those two minutes to find these things - you can't use free skate mode to look through the levels for these things. Managing to find that super long grind or pull off the combo to get the C-O-M-B-O letters (definitely one of the more difficult challenges) will practically make you jump out of your seat.

To me, the story mode was never that entertaining of an aspect in the Tony Hawk games. Maybe, to those that started playing them later in the series, the story mode was what they grew up wit but I feel different about it. However, the story mode in American Wasteland is pretty enjoyable - you can see constant progress in Skate Ranch with it. While, in past games, seeing progression only meant seeing that you got to the next level, progression here can be seen in a skate park that gets more and more skateable as the game goes on. Rewards like this that don't involve giving the player more points, money or something like that are ideas we need to see in more games in the future. Seeing skate ranch grow was just awesome. Also interesting was the BMX mode. While you won't use a bike for long, it is fun. And it is also nice that the bike mode was kept to a minimum - the series is, after all, a skateboarding series first and foremost.

As for the create-a-modes, they're pretty much the same as they've always been. You can still create a park that's just one long grind or a ton of ramps and halfpipes if you really want to. Or, you can actually try to create a realistic park and have fun with it that way. Something I've always found fun is having a friend create one park, I create another and then we try to score higher on the other's park.

One feature I really enjoyed was the online mode. Now, it's no real secret - I'm not much of a competitive gamer. Sure, I'll enjoy some deathmatch on occasion, but I don't really enjoy playing against people. At any chance I'm given, I'll choose to play cooperative modes in games. When I saw that American Wasteland offered co-op, I was very happy. Getting to play with someone over Live instead of against them was definitely a relief.

American Wasteland was definitely a fun game to play and was a good throwback to the origins of the series. It comes with enough new stuff to keep those that have been playing for awhile happy while not being too difficult to learn for someone that has yet to play a Tony Hawk game. I'd definitely recommend picking this one up.