I have mixed feelings about Tony Hawks American Wasteland, which you're going to have the pleasure of reading right from the first paragraph. Normally I drag the introduction out to hook the reader - but I'm past all that. These superb 'no loading times' that are advertised everywhere about this latest skating game from NeverSoft don't live up to their promises. It's almost like signing up for a pleasurable night of pleasurable activities, and, upon signing your name, the leggy brunette takes her wig off, gets rid of her Russian accent and now there stands a deep voiced, bald mental man, who is laughing hysterically - as you've just signed your ass away for four hours! What I'm trying to say is that there are loading times in this game - plenty of them too, but they seem to be disguised just as well as the bald man was. At least, that's what you think for a while, until the disguise is seen through. To sell the game on this proviso was the wrong move, because I was expecting a GTA streaming environment, which isn't what I got after 30 minutes of playing.

But before we get onto the loading times, let me tell you about the story mode. I think American Wasteland gets the story bang on this time. Throughout this generation of consoles, the Tony Hawk games have tried to have some backbone, some sort of storyline - they've always had something, but nothing major. In American Wasteland, the game takes you through quite a thick (as thick as a skater story can get) plot with likeable characters, both good and bad, all told in a quirky way. For example, the story FMVs are often illustrated with funky cartoon hand drawn pictures. In this story, your partly made character has run away from home, to the streets where the famous skaters started off and were recognised on.

The story isn't revolutionary, but it does add the single player mode quite a bit. However, with a proper story come hardly any significant gameplay changes whatsoever. Aside from the welcomed BMX addition, which allows you to ride and grind on a bike, which we'll cover later on, the skateboarding side hasn't really changed from Tony Hawk's Underground 2. The worst news is that you'll have to learn everything again, from basic manuals to sticker slaps; don't expect to be able to just on American Wasteland and bust some sick moves straight away.

It's unfortunate that most of the game plays like a tutorial. It takes you most of the story to learn all of the moves, and when you're asked to do something, like grind here, flip over this gap, grind there, and then land the trick with a spin, everything is marked out on the ground with transparent arrows and signs. Suddenly, pulling off a long string of tricks for a mission plays like a dancing game, where you have to time your moves to the beat. Except there is no beat here. The game pretty much holds your hand, to the point that you feel like you have no freedom around the many states available - rarely will you have time to skate at your leisure - which isn't a bad thing, seeing as skating at your leisure isn't rewarding anyway, unless you've acquired sponsors that require you to bust a certain trick or pull off a specific combo.

These sponsors don't come with markers, thankfully. When you accept a sponsor from one of the skate shops around one of the many states, you get a list of things to do. Objectives could have you pulling off a large combo, which get you racking up massive multiple trick combos by grinding, maybe jumping off your board at the end of the grind and then running on foot before jumping onto another rail in a short space of time, so both tricks merge and you get a superb combo score at the end. I love sponsors, because they do actually give you that classic Tony Hawk's feel of completing objectives. Sponsors also give you stats when you complete objectives, which generally make your skater perform better in certain areas. No more awarding points!

Probably my favourite feature of American Wasteland is being able to ride a BMX bike. The feature is so good in fact, that I avoided my skateboard at all costs. Unfortunately, most of the gameplay requires for you to be on a skateboard, although there are BMX missions dotted around too. The BMX bike is a lot of fun to ride and adopts a completely new set of controls especially for the bike, just to give you that different feeling. It's hard to explain, but with a BMX it almost feels like you have more control over the moves, as most of the moves are pulled off with the thumbsticks on the controller. Pulling off manuals requires you to shift a lot of weight with the thumbstick, either front or back, and suddenly shifting weight back and forth becomes a lot of fun, especially when you're combining sick manuals with bone crunching grinds.

So the loading times in this game are disguised with one of two things. You can take a bus or car ride to your desired destination, you can move about on the bus, but this is the more obvious of the two loading paths - because the game is loading while you're on the bus! The one that sickens me is the loading corridor that bridges the gap between two states or areas. It's worth mentioning that the states aren't that big anyway; in theory they should be able to do without the loading times. Anyway, you'll run, skate or bike down these hallways, which are rather long, and in the middle of these hallways are jittery slowdown moments, which are, as you may have guessed, loading times. You can grind your way through these corridors if you like, but from my point of view, both the bus trip and the bridging corridors are nothing but glorified loading times. This game isn't without loading times, so don't be fooled!

My main gripe is that the story mode is too short and far too easy. So not only is the game holding your hand the majority of the way, but you'll just be getting into the story when, suddenly, it ends. Thankfully, the inclusion of Classic Mode is here, where you have two minutes to get high scores, or collect C-O-M-B-O in one combo, or even run around scouting the level for the letters to form the word 'skate'. In this mode you can add stat points to your pre-made character, providing you find stat points on all of the classic levels. I found myself playing this more than the actual story; as good as that is, it's not quite as classic as the Classic mode. You can even play classic mode co-operatively with a friend, which is a new and welcome addition to the multiplayer section.

Graphically, American Wasteland is just the same as the rest. There's nothing fantastic about the graphics - maybe they could have been better if we would have sacrificed the no loading times, but I'm willing to trade mind-blowing graphics for the no loading times we received. In all seriousness though, I'm sure even the disguised loading times put pressure on the graphics system this year. With that said, the game still looks as sharp as it ever did, with plenty of well rendered objects to skate and grind on, as well as some well thought out level design - I really couldn't be much happier with this aspect.

The sound is good too; there are loads and loads of music tracks that play in the background, on Tony Hawk radio - music from artists that I know, like the Scissor Sisters, and music from artists skaters will undoubtedly know, such as Sick Dogg. Before any skating fan complains, let me point out that Sick Dogg doesn't exist. I made him up. Along with a large selection of tracks to listen to, comes a whole host of sound effects, falling skaters and all those horrible spine cracking noises (although miraculously my skater still stands up and continues after breaking his neck) and then plenty of SFX for grinding, flipping and lipping the half pipe. Again, just like the other games.

There's nothing cosmetically wrong with Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Sure, the story is a little short, and yes, they lied about no loading times, but this game is just as good as the previous instalments. However, that's the downfall right there. It's almost just the same as THUG2 - and to be quite honest, I'm starting to think NeverSoft are running out of ideas to keep the series fresh. While they've added things like BMX biking and a decent story into mix, it's going to take a lot more than this when we come to reviewing the next inevitable instalment. There's quite a bit of lasting appeal thanks to the Classic Mode and the multiplayer, which is more or less as same as it's ever been - skate with another player. There are also online modes, for anybody that's interested in going online with other sick players from around the globe. If you are considering American Wasteland though, make sure you warrant the purchase before actually paying full whack for an old game in new clothing.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).