"Skateboarding's gotten stale. Might as well grab a hula hoop, kids."

The Xbox 360 version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is a weak sauce port, but Tony Hawk's Project 8 more than satisfies. The general ideas of this series remain unchanged. Tony Hawk's set up an elite skateboarding group called the Project 8. To find a place in this group, the player's skateboarder has to move up in the ranks around the local city. However, this is not easy- the list includes the top 200 boarders in the area, starting you off at spot number 200. Throughout the game, players will interact with different parts of the city and its inhabitants to get ahead. One woman, a real estate agent, wants revenge against her rival because there are signs all over the place. Others will teach the finer points of the trick system, including new moves and challenges. Even Jason Lee, from My Name Is Earl, shows up, promoting his Stereo brand and looking to work out some kind of sponsorship deal. There's lots to do here, with the same style of humor that the series is known for.

Some of the challenges come with a ramped-up difficulty scale- Amateur, Pro, and Sick. Amateur tasks can be finished rather easily. Pro tasks, like reaching a certain grind combo or a high trick count on a videotaped run, require more practice. As for Sick, well, good luck. A lot of them include difficult point A to point B missions. For instance, one objective requires the skateboarder to take a tumble down the Capitol stairs and break as many bones as they possibly can. It's the variety of these missions that will have newbies and hardcore skaters coming back for more.

The gameplay is mostly the same as in previous Tony Hawk games. Spin moves, grinds, flips, manuals, pivots, reverts, and grabs make their triumphant return. Players can also click the left thumb stick and temporarily enter Focus mode. The action slows down so that more attention can be paid to tricks at hand. Focus works better here than in previous games, if only because the graphics provide a better perspective of what's going on. The combo system is still in place, allowing players to build up million-point combinations out the ying yang, but what's really cool here is a new feature called Nail the Trick.

With Nail the Trick, time slows down once again, but the control scheme changes completely. The left and right analog sticks move the player's feet. Timing is VERY crucial in this mode, as the feet have to land perfectly on the board in order to score the points. This mode can either be entered manually by clicking the analog sticks in together off a jump, or automatic in certain spots of the game. This mode is astounding, as it allows players to build their own tricks.

The Tony Hawk universe has plenty to offer within Project 8. There's a tutorial mode for those who are new to the series, as well as Free Skate, Career Mode, and plenty of achievements to unlock. But the real appeal lies in online play. Here, eight players can skate together, completing a number of issued challenges that are automatically thrown out. This can be anything from building massive combos to getting the highest score on the board to a good old fashioned game of "anything you can do, I can do better", aka HORSE. It's a little confusing to see Nail the Trick still implemented here, though. If time slows down for you, how does it keep going forward for everyone else? It's a rift in the space/time continuum or something. Past this small hitch, there's plenty of goodness to be had, including leader boards with loads of sick point counts.