Video Game Season Continues

Two months left in videogame season and the gameplaying is going strong, and a special present is on the way.

My Madden '06 1-2-1 Bengals (0-4-0 pre-season) took a break while the kids had some fun on their skateboards. I was alternating between Madden '06 and Tony Hawk: American Wasteland (with an occasional trip to the Evil Dead Cabin to blow some she-bitch head off), and then Tony Hawk became the only game. It is such a good game.



Much like other Tony Hawk games you skate around town performing stunts on demand for people on the streets until you clear a certain section of town and then you are given a new area of town to conquer.

My two favorite things about Tony Hawk games. First,skaters don't see the world you and I do. I see a planter with a tree in it, the skater sees something he'd like jump on/off/grind/put a sticker on. And so the WHOLE WORD in this game is nothing but random ramps created by pieces of plywood haphazardly left leaning on a dumpster at a conspicuous 45 degree angle by construction workers, and in the handicapped politically correct town gone wild EVERYTHING HAS A RAIL. Of course there would be no game or at least a simply boring one if it were otherwise, but I like to think I'm seeing the world through skaters eyes so that everything looks like a half-pipe. And second, I LOVE how skaters fight crime and create feats of helpful magic with thier skateboarding prowess.



A stranger's car has broken down, do you push it? or do you ollie off it to movie it? A construction worker needs help diggin up pavement, do you help him dig it up, or do you grind the surface of each shovel digging it up? Someone needs something loosened, do you loosen it, or do you do a skateboard spin on top of it until it comes off? I love it, it's the skateboarder superhero solution to all life's problems. The real solution would, of course, make a boring game, but I love from the skater POV that all problems can be solved with a skateboard and a little knowhow.

The main mission of the game is to build the ultimate skate ranch by destroying parts of the city. Sticker slap the Dinosaur head to make it fall and it becomes a part of the ranch. Grind the statue and it falls and become a part of the ranch. But my FAVORITE scenario for all of the above stated reasons was when I had to grind a highway sign to make it fall onto the highway, because simply unscrewing it, again, boring. So I grind it, it falls, it causes a three semi-pileup sending the freight from one of the trucks, a bunch of cement pylons, up into the air landing perfectly to create a bunch of quarter-pipes. OF COURSE IT DOES! And then the sign is hauled to the ranch so I can hanstand stall on that bitch.

Much like Grand Theft Auto, Tony Hawk gives me the opportunity to do shit I would love to do, but never would. You know those fifteen story cranes they put up to haul up buildings (and then somehow get that crane out of the center when I'm not looking), I skated off of one of those. That was cool.

I need to get some more Evil Dead time in, in life as well as in videogames there is no break from football or skateboarding quite like blowing away re-animated flesh.