360 American Wasteland really is disappointing graphically...

I purchased Tony Hawk: American Wasteland the other day, since it was $25. Multiple forum posts, comments, and articles bashed its lack of effort graphically. I figured the graphics were bad, but I wasn't convinced it would look like a direct port to the 360 from the current generation systems.

Well, it does. And it's disturbing, even in High Definition glory. It makes me wonder if anti-Xbox-360 gamers use this game as a prime example to support their lame Xbox 1.5 comments? Dead Rising is a prime example that this mocking name is inappropriate.

Granted, this is a launch title and it was obviously a rush-job in order to get on teh new-console bandwagon with little effort. But after playing other launch titles such as PDZ, Quake 4, and even Dead or Alive 4, this TH offering is downright pathetic graphically.

Ignoring the "last gen uglies", the game is actually standard fare and still good old Tony Hawk fun. My colossus-sized fear was that the d-pad would make this game a miserable play on the 360. That fear was quickly smacked away as I found the game to be quite functional with the 360's oddball d-pad. Maybe they learned a bit about sensitivity?

The only playability problem I'm running into has nothing to do with the design of the game. I'm so accustomed to using left-thumbstick that I keep inadvertantly switching to it. While the thumbstick works, its range of motion is too much for this time of game. It comes down to a matter of self-training.

Thankfully, this alleviated my concern that Project 8 would be an annoyance to play on the 360 pad. My previous plan was to just grab the PS3 version, but since it will lack online support, I needed to look at other options. Now I'm looking forward to the next Tony Hawk entry more than ever.