Tony Hawk's is one of the most long-running and successful series of games ever - and with good reason; since the original Pro Skater, developers Neversoft have strived to retain their compelling and addictive gameplay while expanding the format in new and exciting ways. Never has that been more apparent with the latest iteration, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. However, it's hardly next generation gaming, so the question isn't really if AW is any good, but rather if it belongs in the Xbox 360 launch line-up.

There's just no disputing that Neversoft has packed a huge amount of variety and challenge into the gameplay of their latest release. The best place to start is in the Story Mode, which takes you through a wacky tale of being a young skater from the sticks looking to find success at skateboarding in the big smoke. Featuring a group of amusing characters that you meet along the way, as well as some cool, if over the top, comic book art to aid the story, you play the wannabe skate star as you take part in all manner of missions and challenges to impress the locals, work your way up the pecking order and generally make a name for yourself.

The story begins appropriately enough in the Hollywood district, where upon stepping off the bus you're mugged by two skaters, who beat you up and steal your backpack. A hot and feisty babe comes to talk to you and suggests that for starters you find yourself a new look, so it's not glaringly obvious that you're a noob on the scene. After buying some new threads at the clothing store and getting a decent hairstyle, it's down to business, as the next of no less than 95 missions is presented. Ben Whofleck is arriving for the premier of his latest film and someone dares you to grind along the red ropes and kickflip over his head. Several failed attempts later (I'm a Tony Hawk noob I'm afraid!) and I achieved the goal and moved onto the next mission.

The great thing about the Story Mode is that it teaches you all the skills gradually, then presents you with a mission that puts them into practice. The people that you meet along the way will teach you new stuff if you impress them and do what they ask, and soon the repertoire of moves you've learned is vast. As the story unfolds, you fall in with a few guys (only after learning new skills and impressing them by reproducing the trick combos they can pull) who take you to a Skate Ranch, which is basically a piece of wasteland with a few ramps on it. The owner, Iggy, is less than friendly to you, but after proving you've got what it takes to match him, you manage to ingratiate yourself and from there a whole bunch of new missions come up - all of them involving wrecking and then stealing stuff! You accomplish this by grinding, spinning or performing combos, sticker slaps, wallplants and more on various objects to loosen them, knock them free and then steal them away in your truck to take back to the Skate Ranch and use as part of a growing park of obstacles and attractions.

Of course, there will come times when you need money. Earlier on you had a mission to rack up big combos on the roof of a condemned building to cause the giant dino head (a T-Rex of course) attached to it to come crashing down and scare away some sheep-loving protestors (told you it was wacky!) But you have to pay the city worker in charge of the head to take it off his hands. A little later on you need money to enter the AMJAM contest and from time to time missions crop up that force you to earn some cash (which you'll also need to change your wardrobe, accessories and hairstyle). Fortunately, there are vagrants hanging around the place that will pay you money for doing what they want - performing a certain move three times in a minute, performing a specific move they name but don't tell you how to do, grinding for a certain length of time, pulling off a range of specific combos and so on - all against the clock. Succeed and you get paid. Fail and you can try again without penalty, but only after locating the challenger again, who has moved to a different part of the level.

As well as the cash, you also need credibility, which comes from completing sponsor challenges. Most districts of the city have a skate shop and on the outside is a board that presents the day's challenge. If you like the look of it then give it a go - if not, take a nap and wait for the next day to arrive. The only way you can enter the AMJAM is if you complete a certain number of these challenges and the way the Story forces you to take up side quests from time to time is actually quite clever, only adding to the variety.

Coming back to the move sets, and the amount you can do in Tony Hawk's is (thanks to the Create-A-Trick feature) literally endless. You start off with your basic ollie (jump) of which there are the boned and boneless varieties, and once in the air (you'll get great height going up ramps or half and quarter-pipes) you can use the left thumbstick in conjunction with the X and B buttons to pull off various flips and grabs. An assortment of grind tricks are on offer and it's not just rails that can be grinded along - all manner of objects are there for the grinding at the push of a button - you have to watch your balance though and the balance meter becomes trickier to use the longer you go. When going up a half or quarter pipe you can stop at the top for a lip trick, where you hold yourself in position, or you can speed into the air and revert, meaning that instead of coming back down the pipe, you carry on beyond it. And the list goes on - you can wallride across gaps, sticker slap or wallplant to bounce off walls for extra height, natas spin on the tops of poles, skitch behind vehicles (and even dogs!) to let them pull you along, and pull off many more advanced grabs, flips, spins and rolls.

One of the best things about American Wasteland is the recent addition to the series of being able to get off your board and walk around, climb ladders and even run up a wall then flip yourself away from it to reach places you couldn't get to in any other way. You can even spray graffiti to tag any wall you like, or better yet do it for money by tagging a certain spot that the local graffiti artist wants sprayed. You also get a special meter that slows down time, giving you the chance to perform more tricks in the air, as well as special tricks you can't perform unless you're using your special meter. As if all this variety wasn't enough, you can ride a BMX around too, which has its own set of tricks to master - making it almost two games in one just from that perspective alone.

If you're not too keen on the Story Mode (and I can't imagine any Tony Hawk's fan wouldn't enjoy it) you can always go old-school with the Classic Mode. Here you play through a series of city areas with ten objectives to complete, such as getting a high scoring combo, a high overall score, collecting the S-K-A-T-E letters scattered around the level and the C-O-M-B-O letters, which must be grabbed in one combo move, finding the location of the secret tape, ollieing over five barriers, knocking five pairs of shoes off telegraph wires and performing specific tricks in specific locations, to mention but a few. Each area has ten objectives - the catch? You only have two minutes to rack up those big scores, or track down all five pairs of shoes or skate letters. Obviously you don't have to complete all ten objectives in two minutes (that would be impossible), so it's good to just focus on one or two objectives each time you play the level.

And speaking of the levels, they really are fantastically designed for maximum fun, with ramps, half-pipes and quarter-pipes everywhere, endless grindable objects and all manner of short cuts and sneaky routes to discover as you skate around the level at leisure. All those objects to knock down and collect, like a massive record player needle on top of a music store, an 8 ball on the roof of a garage, a fire escape, a statue and many more are a lot of fun to get hold of too. Each district in the game, of which there is a good number, is colourful and distinctive with a fairly unique look, and exploring these areas is always highly enjoyable.

Graphically, American Wasteland isn't exactly pushing your lovely new 360. That's not to say that it doesn't look great, because everything is colourful and detailed, the animations of your skater and the way the tricks flow together are superb and it seems to me that there is a subtle improvement in the graphics over the Xbox version - everything looks crisper, shinier and generally that bit more polished. However, it is at the end of the day a slightly enhanced Xbox game and thus the weakest launch game for showing off your new prized possession's abilities. When it comes to the sound, all the effects are spot on, from the ambient noises around you of traffic passing by to the rolling of your skateboard wheels on concrete, grinding on metal and the crash when you hit the floor, splattering blood everywhere. The voice acting in the Story mode is also very good, and the script is entertaining and well written. However, of the sixty or so music tracks available, there's little variety beyond the rock and punk normally associated with a game like this; if you're not really into that style of music, prepare to rip some CDs onto your hard drive.

The range of Create modes available in American Wasteland is very impressive. First of all, you can Create-A-Skater and there's reasonable variety when it comes to sculpting the face, body shape and hair before choosing from a wide range of clothing, shoes and accessories, including tattoos that can be placed on many parts of the body. Create-A-Park is a place where a fan of AW could easily lose several days, messing around with a massive range of ramps, pipes, buildings, tunnels, cars, poles, rails and many more items to construct the ultimate skate park - and the way they've designed it makes it very simple to use. Then there's Create-A-Graphic, where you have 8 layers of graphics to play around with and a huge range of pictures to pick from that can be resized, rotated, moved, flipped, coloured and so on, plus you can add text, to create your own unique graphics to graffiti around the place in various game modes. Finally you've got Create-A-Trick, which requires slightly more effort to get the hang of, but it's a very clever and versatile system that allows you to design any sort of new trick you like, giving you literally endless possibilities.

When it comes to multiplayer modes, American Wasteland has it well and truly covered. Most of the game modes on offer can be played two-player on split screen, but where it's really at is online, with up to eight players in a game. Coming online, you will see some truly astonishing mad skills and as you watch other players (which you can do at the end of a match while they finish off their final trick) you'll see them pulling off insane combos with amazing fluidity, as if it's simply impossible to fall off. I've seen players that routinely pull off combos going into the millions and even some combos that end up in the tens of millions - so to say that the competition's fierce is an understatement! But as is the nature of Tony Hawk's, it's always good fun whether you win or lose - unless you don't like losing, that is!

There's a great variety of game modes to take part in - standard modes include Trick Attack where the biggest score in the set time limit (usually only a minute or two) wins the match, Score Challenge where the first person to hit the score limit wins and Combo Mambo, where the biggest single combo wins. Elimiskate is a cool variation on Trick Attack, where the player with the lowest score is eliminated when time runs out, after which it's back to zero and this carries on until only one player remains. Then there are modes like Capture the Flag, Graffiti, where the most tagged objects win, Slap, where the player that slaps the most people wins and King of the Hill, where you must grab the crown and accrue points while wearing it - beware though, you're slower with the crown and all the other players will be out to slap it off you!

Goal Attack gives you a selection of Classic Mode goals to complete and the first person to achieve them all is the winner, while Scavenger Hunt is a race to collect the most coins scattered around the level and in Pot O' Gold only the player with the pot o' gold can score, while the rest try to slap it off of him or her to steal it and score themselves. Firefight is a very cool and unusual mode, where you build up fireballs in your skateboard as you rack up combos and the aim is blast all the other players into oblivion! Or you can just do good old Free Skate, skating around in a relaxed fashion. With this kind of variety available online anytime, it rounds off a package that's just brimming with things to do.

So, we've established that Tony Hawk's American Wasteland more than lives up to the high standards of the series, keeping the classic and addictive gameplay while providing a range of challenges, both old and new, to keep you entertained both offline and on. But is it worth getting on Xbox 360? Well, if you're a massive TH fan and plan on getting the game regardless, then you might as well pick it up on 360, because it looks that bit nicer, plays that bit smoother and the load times for taking a bus to another district of the city last less than five seconds. However, you really shouldn't even think about picking up American Wasteland before you've got Amped 3 proudly displayed on your games shelf, because it eclipses Tony Hawk's in every conceivable way - graphics, music selection, story and cut scene presentation, and even gameplay, plus there's even more to do. The omission of online play in Amped 3 is criminal, but even so, it soars high above AW, at least in my opinion. Still, when it comes to gameplay, Tony Hawk's games have always been right up there for entertaining the masses and AW is no different, so despite not blowing you away with incredible next-gen visuals, I do think that this carefully crafted and professionally put together title has without doubt earned a place in the 360 launch line-up. Whether or not it earns a place on your shelf is up to you…

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).