Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (2005)

Genre: Sport  |  Players: 1-2 / 2-8 Online  |  Developer: Neversoft

Oh, no, not another Tony Hawk game post! Yes, but there's something positive to say this time, so I don't have to feel depressed by the end of it.

The main one-player game has the same awful 'One Goal at a Time' structure as the previous three entries, but for an 'open world' setting it does an admirable job at fooling you into thinking there are no loading times between areas.

The story is better than T.H.U.G's was. It's even kind of funny at times. You're a regular nobody, a wannabe, fresh off the bus, required to prove your skills to the local doucebags skaters before you can get a foot in the competition door and land some sweet sponsorship deals. Along the way you'll make friends and play a key role in the building of a private Skate Ranch.

You could play through that half of the game if you want, you might even enjoy parts of it, but the best thing about T.H.A.W is that it has CLASSIC MODE!

Classic Mode is respectful to the structure of THPS 1-3. You're given a set amount of time and a set number of goals (including Secret Tape) that when completed don't halt the action – you can keep going, stringing goals together in one glorious run. And, as before, you can boost your abilities by finding and acquiring Stat Points. The difficulty level is set kind of high, so new players may well be succumbing to frustration at times, but eventually you'll learn the layout of the levels and the button presses needed to score big combos.

More praise: the soundtrack has some excellent tunes from the likes of (in no particular order) Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, D.R.I., Public Enemy, Spirit Caravan, Green Day, The Doors, The Bravery, Motley Crue, and lots more (sixty-three in all).

Interestingly, the voice of the main character (Kensucky) in the one-player campaign is Will Friedle, who you may know as Terry McGinnis/Batman from Batman Beyond (aka Batman of the Future, 1999-2001). His new best friend is voiced by Cree Summer, who played Terry's friend Max in the same show.

3½ boulevards of broken wheels out of 5

Path of Neo (2005)

Genre: Action | Players: 1 | Developer: Shiny Entertainment

The biggest problem with this release is probably the philosophical/moral one. This was sold as your chance to dictate the path of Neo. It’s the name of the fucking game, man! Thing is, you can only really change ONE THING. And, that only results in the absence of a clip or two from a rapid-fire montage of scenes from the film. I feel sooooo empowered… No, this isn't an art-house game, and I didn't expect it to be a Western RPG, either. Choice was promised in a straight-forward game and I RIGHTFULLY expected a few, simple branching paths at the very least.

At some points, the gameplay can now make me feel nauseous because of the visuals, movement, and filters utilized. The combos can be quite elaborate but the longer unlockable ones feel like they can only be executed via luck and/or button mashing. Some upgrades are dependent on small set-pieces that can easily be missed. Once you miss something, it’s almost irrevocably absent from your file, even if you load up a prior save, get it, and continue forward recreating the data. This is most unacceptable with the super jump ability that mostly fills in for your ability to fly. In fact, it tends to be gone altogether when you load up a save AFTER receiving it.

It is present in the levels that absolutely require it for traversal, thankfully, and those are the most interesting in the game. You may not be able to change much of anything in terms of Neo’s narrative but what was newly added tends to be the best aspect of what’s on display here. Merv’s levels are delightfully Escher-esque and now remind me of an area in Silent Hill Downpour. Though brief, I’ve still never forgotten the train-car segments in the subway.

The requisite new ending is cheeky and clever enough that I’m able to laugh at it and I have sincerely always been satisfied and glad that it exists. Thumbs up, Wachowskis, for navigating a minefield.

It’s a shitty, shitty action game and is incredibly unpolished but there is creativity buried in here if you’re willing to fish it out. There’s no great imperative to, like there originally was with Enter the Matrix, but there are worse things you can spend your time doing. Not many, but a few.

Buyer’s Guide: PS2, Xbox, PC

1½ Nods to Marsellus Wallace out of 5

Enter the Matrix (2003)

Genre: Action | Players: 1 | Developer: Shiny Entertainment

This is a much maligned game, and in terms of gameplay, I 100% agree. The movement is animated poorly, the environments are shoddily rendered, and frankly there are some glitches afoot that can prevent forward progress altogether. I played this when I returned to gaming around 2005 and even then I knew deep down that it was a fairly miserable interactive endeavor. I never would have expected the Constantine game to be the eternal champion of those initial purchases. You CAN mess around with what I will retroactively call a hacking app and make your controller vibrate on command, if that does anything for you. It shouldn't.

When it comes to the story, however, this a case of a diamond being completely enmeshed in an elephant turd. The cutscenes are MAGNIFICENT, flat out. They are hyper canonical, in my book. Not only are we treated to more footage of Mary Alice as the Oracle (who I prefer in the role) but we're also given a more balanced glimpse of Lock, a wonderful and funny fight scene for Ballard (Roy Jones Jr.), our third hilarious Operator/Everyman (Sparks), and everything I need to justify Ghost being one of my most cherished characters in the entire saga.

The Wachowskis must be commended for realizing their value compared to the mountain of trash they were buried in, and consequently liberating them. They can now be found in the Reloaded Revisited materials on the Ultimate Matrix Collection. What took place in the game between them can easily be inferred even if you haven't touched this, which, you shouldn't. The only (non-)issue is that the scenes have an air of taking place during Reloaded AND Revolutions because of Mary Alice's presence. I tend to watch them in between the first movie and Reloaded but watching them in between either is the best you're going to do outside of splicing them into Reloaded yourself. That is, of course, if you've seen the trilogy before. If you want to watch them on your first run of the films.....don't. There's no super clean way to do it as a virgin to the property.

I haven't much spoke to this as a game, because to me it really isn't one. It was a miserable little cage that no longer need exist in my world or on my shelf.

Buyer's Guide: Don't you dare. PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC. Blu-Ray, DVD

1 Purpose Properly Reinstated out of 5

Costume Quest 2 (2014)

Genre: Action / RPG  |  Players: 1  |  Developer: Double Fine Productions

The '2' in the title is a clue. Yes, it's a sequel. But didn't costumed twins Wren and Reynold already save Hallowe'en in the original Costume Quest (2010)? Maybe they did, but they need to save it again, this time in the past, because there's some rudimentary timey-wimey shenanigans afoot. Grab your sack and suit up, kids.

CQ 2 doesn't reinvent the gaming wheel, but it makes good use of the one it already had. As before you're completing quests for both XP and candy, but a number of little things have been improved.

You now have access to the speedy-boots regardless of which costume you're wearing, so you'll not have to switch as often for simple level traversing.

However, you will be required to switch during the exploration phase in order to operate or initiate certain things within the colourful world. If you find an inaccessible part of a level, it likely means you don't have the correct costume yet, so find or earn its component parts before returning.

A small number of the new costumes are secret, meaning you won't just find them during the course of a standard play through; you'll have to go off the obvious path a few times in order to discover them.

The turn based combat has also received some minor but welcome tweaks and additions, although it does still feel repetitive after a while. Also, if you just scrape through a fight and are far from a save point, you can scoff a small portion of your candy haul and recover some health that way.

In closing, if you're too lazy, too old, unwilling or unable to role-play within the watered-down farce of a meaningful annual pagan festival that is modern Hallowe'en night, then you can do it from the comfort of your own home in your socks, and you won't get sick from all the sugar and razor blades, either.

3 candy violations out of 5

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (2002)

If the loud parts of the internet are to be believed, a majority of Tony Hawk game fans consider Tony Hawk's Underground (2003), aka T.H.U.G, to be the turning point for the franchise, the game where it went from strength to shambles. I differ in that I feel THPS 4 was that point; it was the title that changed the core structure upon which all else was built. T.H.U.G just took it to the next (lowest) level.

Gone are the quick, arcade style, individual runs, replaced by a more open-world, free-skate environment in which tasks or goals have to be initiated by speaking to NPCs, and to do that you first have to find the damned NPCs in the now larger environments. Making each area more expansive may sound good in theory, but in practice it means that there are less nearby objects to combo to and you have further to travel to find the next goal each time you complete one. (You can choose goals from a list in the menu once you've discovered them, but why would you want to do that?) Furthermore, having the S-K-A-T-E and C-O-M-B-O letters spread further apart makes gathering them less enjoyable.

Stat Points are now earned from completing the aforementioned tasks, not littered around the environment for you to collect. It's a process that's at odds with the illusion of freedom that the 'open-world' is supposed to give you, and to some degree it dictates the order in which you can do certain things.

The most notable consequence of the change, however, is that the huge sense of pride a player felt when achieving more than one goal in a single run is no longer possible. You have one task and once it's achieved you're returned to the free-skate-esque environment to hunt down the next one. The transition from being 'on a task' to 'off a task' is an ugly, abrupt and jarring one, making the already unfavourable process seem even more poorly considered.

I’ve saved the worst until last. Prepare for eye-twich. There are mini-games.

On a positive note, the customisation options are extensive for a game of the era, and the number of hidden, unlockable skaters is generous, so you can at least look cool in-game while you're wishing you'd picked up the THPS3 disc instead.

2½ flippity-doos out of 5

Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry (2014)

Genre: Action / Adventure | Players: 1 | Developer: Ubisoft

Our introduction to Freedom Cry’s protagonist Adéwalé was in Ass Creed IV: Black Flag (2013) when he served as quartermaster aboard Captain Kenway's pirate ship, the Jackdaw. FC is set fifteen years after that time, with the former quartermaster now a fully-fledged assassin and Captain of his own vessel.

Things go bad and Adéwalé gets washed ashore after a shipwreck. The place he lands is Saint-Domingue, a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. In Saint-Domingue black workers are kept as slaves by cruel white masters. Adéwalé empathises with the working men and women, having once been held in similar chains, so he chooses to stay and liberate them using his assassin skills.

Originally a DL-only addition to Black Flag it was subsequently released as a standalone title minus the IV prefix in the title. That means if you own the Ass Creed IV disc you can choose the original partial download. It’s the full FC game but makes use of your existing AC IV install files. If you don’t have the disc you can download a larger file enabling you to play the full FC game in its standalone guise. At full price, when compared to the amount of gameplay that IV gives you, FC is piss-poor value. It doesn't get close to my definition of value for money.

The biggest addition to gameplay is the ability to free slaves from plantations. In fact, it’s your currency while on land. It sounds odd, but (once unlocked) guns and ammunition are free as reward for selfless services rendered. The better items can only be purchased once you've freed enough people.

There’s an important social message at its core that's deserving of wider attention, but everything about the expansion feels rushed, from the story to the poorly thought-out progressions and limited number of upgrades. Whereas IV had more in it than it first appeared, FC has less than it first appears. The majority of the locations are nothing more than a tiny beach area with two or three visible treasure chests. You’ll visit them once, with no need to ever return. Worse still, the sea shanties are absent, meaning sea journeys feel longer and are mirthless.

The few larger areas that make up the bulk of the game are well-designed and would've fit nicely into IV. It's a shame there isn't more to do within them and that the missions on them are so broken. Of the nine memories (missions) available, I had to restart six because of glitches. One in particular had to be restarted four times because the same glitch made it impossible to complete. That's the kind of thing I'd expect in a beta, not a final product. Well, except a Ubisoft product.

2½ changing tides out of 5

Pokémon Y (2013)

Genre: RPG | Players: 1-4 | Developer: Game Freak

The main lineage of Pokémon games all have the same structure; It’s unavoidable. You collect pokemon and grind them up jrpg style to defeat 8 gym leaders, the Elite 4, and then the Champion. The last few generations have all instituted sweeping social gaming innovations, however, and the changes for the 6th gen can be found here (navigate via the right sidebar). I generally avoid that sort of thing, so I won’t mention them further.

The biggest change this generation falls to the graphics. Being able to walk in all directions is cosmetic, admittedly, but the animations for each pokémon and their attacks are a sweeping, legitimate upgrade that drew me in FAR more than I would have ever expected. On top of that, I personally feel that this generation does the best job of providing a cross-section of pokes from the series’ exhaustive history. It’s cool to have an entirely new set, but it also runs the risk of alienating those for whom the majority fail to appeal. I’m looking at you, Gen 5.

There’s also attention paid to providing evolutions in the wild that normally require trades and/or special items. It may take a bit more work to catch them, but it’s worth it for the sense of self-reliance afforded. I’ve heard complaints about the EXP share now leveling all the pokes in your party at the same time, but… Wait, are people actually complaining about not having to grind as much? o_O

In terms of the story, I genuinely like my rival, which is a great change of pace compared to either detesting them or not caring at all. I feel legitimately awful that the items necessary for Mega Evolution can’t be given to them when I don’t care for that mechanic at all and have never used it outside of trying it once for the one pokémon I like that can actually do it. As someone who doesn’t battle other players, it’s a mostly visual change that’s the definition of temporary.

I didn’t foresee my return to the franchise being successful, but it was, as the atmosphere and world are just as charming and the graphics and unique story elements are utilized in the service of that end as opposed to simply providing a new set of pokes and nothing more.

If you play for the journey, don’t skip out on this leg of it. It’s quite possibly the best.

Buyer’s Guide: It’s a 3DS exclusive.

4 Self-spun Tales of a Boy Named Grump out of 5

I do not have binocular fusion and are thus incapable of experiencing 3D. 

Don't ask me how it looks here, or in any other 3DS game.