|
 Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is the loose end of a trilogy with Underground 1 & 2, utilizing a similar free-roam control scheme but expanded even further and now set in the open world sandbox of Los Angeles. Where the two THUG games sat on opposite ends of the story-to-anarchy spectrum, THAW finds a nice middle-ground: your player character travels to LA to escape their crappy home and embrace the skater life, falls in with a group of skate punks, and joins them on a journey to make their secret skate park the best in LA... by wrecking and stealing other parts of LA. While the game is baby's-first-Tony Hawk easy, the controls are some of the nicest in the franchise. Too bad everyone including your character is an aggressive douchebag. The LP JigglyJacob takes lead for the Story Mode, handling the game's Xbox 360 version. I (ThornBrain) join him on co-commentary and will cover the Classic Mode on the PC version at the end of the LP. The Music To avoid issues with copyright bots and the like, the game's usual soundtrack has been muted and replaced with Tony Hawk-appropriate music from myself and several musician friends. Ignore that I'm not from LA and they're not even from California. Music by: ThornBrain | Big Time Kill | smell | Fatigue | Gramlins | Sawtooth What About THUG2? Both Jacob and I had massive recording issues with it, so we're skipping it for now. We'll try again after THAW. ----------------------          
ThornBrain fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Feb 1, 2021 |
#
?
Nov 30, 2020 21:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
I had to look it up because I was so bothered by it. Mindy is voiced by Cree Summer. Which had me very confused because I couldn't stop thinking about Codename Kids Next Door as she was talking and Numbah 5's older sister is named Cree and that had me convinced that that couldn't be her name.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2020 06:08
|
|
|
This iteration of Tiddy is already getting on my nerves. The lack of outright character customization also feels like one of those "but why?" things.
|
|
#
?
Dec 2, 2020 19:23
|
|
|
RareAcumen posted:I had to look it up because I was so bothered by it. Cree from KND is also voiced by Cree Summer.
|
|
#
?
Dec 2, 2020 20:55
|
|
|
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland - Walking In The Footsteps of Sparrow. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 2, 2020 22:22
|
|
|
I remember playing this and the most that I can remember about it is that there was this feeling of something just not clicking in this game. Like it isn't broken but things just didn't go together for this game. Anyway interested in seeing where this leads.
|
|
#
?
Dec 2, 2020 22:32
|
|
|
Speaking of the aesthetic a big-name video game or anything like it that leans so heavily into punk is always going to come off feeling a bit "how do you do fellow kids" even without painting it with the same mid-2000's brush as everything else. Man having to learn the basics just to do them would mess with my head. Like, I get it, its a tutorial and you get them right quick but stopping manuals and reverts at this point in the series until you're told about them? Nah man.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2020 06:34
|
|
|
Kangra posted:Cree from KND is also voiced by Cree Summer. Yeah, I was like 'she sounds just like her- oh hell, what was her name?' and completely forgot about the Tony Hawk game because this got pushed to the front of the line in things I was thinking of.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2020 07:28
|
|
|
Walking in LA? Walking in LA? Nobody walks in LA! Sorry, had to do it soon as I saw the thread title. Out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2020 12:21
|
|
|
At least you're not walking in Memphis.
|
|
#
?
Dec 3, 2020 12:56
|
|
|
Commander Keene posted:At least you're not walking in Memphis. How could they skate with their feet ten feet off of Beale?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2020 15:22
|
|
|
All of my best friends screamed in my face when we first met too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2020 21:07
|
|
|
Sandman hass no inside of his mouth. Why can you see through his throat? WHY CAN YOU SEE THROUGH HIS THROAT?!
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2020 14:22
|
|
|
Jobbo_Fett posted:Sandman hass no inside of his mouth. He had to get a back alley tracheostomy to help solve his mucus problem.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2020 05:36
|
|
|
I can't say I believe you can destroy so much of LA and not immediately get the cops on you. Now, Oakland...
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2020 21:02
|
|
|
Oh man, I love looking at all those  naked ladies in looks at notes Beaverly Hills
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2020 21:35
|
|
|
Even by the standards of video game plots, this one is extremely dumb. It might almost work if it was played up as a parody of the "skateboarders are a menace to society" attitude, but there's no suggestion of that, it's just literally stealing landmarks by skateboarding on them. I'd like to know how they came to this. Like, did it start out as something more reasonable and then gradually shift into this form and by the time anyone stepped back and looked at the whole thing it was too far along to change it? Or was it literally a five minute, who-gives-a-poo poo process where they didn't even bother trying to link the story to the gameplay and just told the staff to make it happen? But why even bother in that case? Just put challenges to skate on various things in the world and then have those things just appear in your fantasy skate park that, obviously, your characters can't actually build but you can teleport to in-game at any time as a fantasy sequence. Or don't even bother with that much. You don't need any explanation for it at all. I don't think anyone would care? It also seems to be trying to walk this extremely fine line where the characters are cool, rebellious criminals but don't actually do any real crimes (other than magical skate-based theft of landmarks).
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2020 10:43
|
|
|
I assume they started with the idea of a plot based around building up a cool skatepark by scavenging parts from around the city. Having your skating tricks cause ridiculous amounts of destruction is a Tony Hawk's staple, ever since you could grind a helicopter wing to turn it on and get it crashing through the roof. Especially following on the heels of THUG2 which was pure destructive id, I can see how they landed on "do skate tricks on cool architecture to break it and loot it for your skate park".
|
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2020 11:33
|
|
|
"We're just having fun, man!" while what you're doing is not "supposed" to be done but doesn't really hurt anything is a pretty common idea for rebellious stuff. But yeah noticing the destruction is really the effect of transporting what was always done in the series into a more recognizable place.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2020 21:22
|
|
|
I don't feel very zen after this, gotta say
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2020 21:01
|
|
|
"I'm kinda proud of what I did here." The timing.  How does he have any face left at all after this episode? Especially the beginning?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2020 21:37
|
|
|
ThornBrain posted:
Robert M. Pirsig would be so disappointed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2020 02:45
|
|
|
Oh my god, so much cringe!  Yeah, I'm sure the guy who was in seclusion and casually threw his "friend's" skateboard into a woodchipper labeled for trespassers is gonna be thrilled with what Tiddy just did! He's just gonna be upset you didn't give out his home address, phone number, e-mail, and measurements. Was definitely amused by the competition just eating poo poo like that, though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2020 23:29
|
|
|
Iggy goes *pop*
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 21:00
|
|
|
I looked up "Patrick Smell 20" like you said to but all I found were pages about Spongebob.
|
|
#
?
Dec 28, 2020 21:38
|
|
|
You guys mentioned in your commentary but I was starting to notice it myself, a lot of the models really do look like a bunch of middle aged men. Our hero and friends are obviously all younger but so many of the guys he meets are like an early version of the dad-boarders in the re-release of 1 and 2.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 06:38
|
|
|
I am loving these silly little asides Jacob(?) or Thorn(?) ( I have no idea who's editing these) is putting into these videos. Really standing by my earlier assessment that it's weird how heavily the game is structured around skateboarding. Do these tricks to shatter these stairs and I'll haul them over to your skate park??? So weird. I wish there was a skateboarding game that went totally over the top about using skateboarding to solve the world's problems. Doing 720's to knock out bank robbers, cancelling out tornadoes by spinning in the opposite direction, some other skateboarding trick to blow up a meteor. Stuff like that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 06:58
|
|
|
Yeah, it's weird to me that this game is both super cartoony in its basic mechanics and concept, but also, the art style and the plot are way too grounded to work with that? Like, if the graphical design was more colorful and characters were more cartoonish, your wacky antics and mayhem would just gel better, instead of just coming off so self-aggrandizing with the very sincere main plot where you make an anarchic space to resist the hegemony of strip malls.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 20:40
|
|
|
Precambrian posted:Yeah, it's weird to me that this game is both super cartoony in its basic mechanics and concept, but also, the art style and the plot are way too grounded to work with that? Like, if the graphical design was more colorful and characters were more cartoonish, your wacky antics and mayhem would just gel better, instead of just coming off so self-aggrandizing with the very sincere main plot where you make an anarchic space to resist the hegemony of strip malls. Hell yeah. Acid drop onto a cartoonish box detonator to blow up the Hollywood sign and steal it. With how the N64 Tony Hawk game had you starting a helicopter and launching it out of a warehouse by grinding its propeller, I'm surprised I haven't seen a way over the top skateboarding game like that all the time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2020 21:09
|
|
|
RareAcumen posted:I am loving these silly little asides Jacob(?) or Thorn(?) ( I have no idea who's editing these) is putting into these videos. It’s not quite this nuts but AirBlade is a skating game where you solve corporate evil with a skateboard.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2021 18:39
|
|
|
RareAcumen posted:Hell yeah. Acid drop onto a cartoonish box detonator to blow up the Hollywood sign and steal it. Hell, I've played Tony Hawk games playing as Spider Man and Boba Fett. They clearly are only so concerned with realism, even before the weird trick physics.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2021 00:45
|
|
|
Not the most yikes guy in the game, but it sure tracks with the rest of it
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2021 21:00
|
|
|
Given that this game was presumably aimed at mid-2000s teens, how many people do you think actually understood the "Fonzie" reference?
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2021 22:21
|
|
|
All that flipping around to move faster, or extend the combo, or whatever, reminds me of Vanquish. But then a lot of stuff reminds me of Vanquish.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 02:16
|
|
|
"You grind it, and it raises up at an angle" -Jacob, 2021
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2021 05:07
|
|
|
Tony Kawfka's American Wasteman
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2021 21:02
|
|
|
Boone's really lucky that fall damage doesn't exist in the world of Tony Hawk.
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2021 21:51
|
|
|
Gee if only Iggy had, I don't know, told anyone he didn't own the land and that they should keep things quiet. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 11, 2021 22:15
|
|
|
Poil posted:Gee if only Iggy had, I don't know, told anyone he didn't own the land and that they should keep things quiet. Yeah, Tiddy's being really lovely, but when you don't tell people important things, don't blame them for messing up the thing they don't know about!
|
|
#
?
Jan 13, 2021 17:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 10:20 |
|
|
Time for a conveyor belt of pros to make their contractual appearances
|
|
#
?
Jan 18, 2021 21:02
|
|