Scoring Guide for Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland Updated 1-16-06 Version 1 =============================================================== Introduction Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland is much too easy offline, and doesn’t do a good job of preparing people for online play. Hopefully, this guide will help you to learn how to score in the millions consistently. The guide is mostly done. There are a lot of useless things I wanted to put in to point out why you shouldn’t do them, but I haven’t felt like doing it. If you have questions concerning something in here feel free to e-mail me at t3h_nO_ob (at) yahoo.com. Please don’t e-mail me concerning goals or technical issues. =============================================================== Scoring This section will explain how to score. It’s divided into three sections which decrease in importance after the first section. Everything in the first section is vital, while there are things in the third section which are only useful to the most obsessed players (who uses Front Tucks anyway?) ************************************** Vital ************************************** This is what should have been in the instructions. Most of the stuff here is fairly obvious, but until you come to terms with everything here you’re not going to do very well. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Concept Base Score x Multiplier = Score If your base score is high and your multiplier is high, you’ll get a lot of points.Your base score is the sum of the point value of all tricks you did in your combo. Your multiplier is the amount of tricks you did in your combo. Your base score will always be higher than your multiplier. The rest of this guide serves to explain how to get high base scores and multipliers by using the tons of techniques available in the game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Flip Tricks These are done with square button and direction. They’re generally fast and low scoring. Do these often to get your multiplier very high. By often I mean every opportunity. When ever your in the air you should do a trick. These can be done into and out of grinds or between rails. By hitting square twice (or sometimes 3 times) you’ll do a trick that’s worth more points and will take longer to do. For instance left + square is a kickflip worth 200 points, but if you press left + square, square you’ll do a double kickflip which takes longer but is worth 500 points; pressing square 3 times will do a triple kickflip worth 1000 points, but it takes the longest. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Grab Tricks Grab tricks are done with circle and a direction. These can be held for more points. You can use these quickly to increase your multiplier or hold them to help with your base score. Remember to let go before you land. You can also do double taps with these. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Grind Tricks These are done with triangle and a direction on a rail or an edge. You have to balance grinds. The more time you spend grinding, the worse your balance gets. The more times you grind the same rail, the worse your balance gets on that rail. It’s unwise to grind for long periods of time as it hurts your balance. Eventually, during a combo you’ll find that your balance becomes practically uncontrollable. It’s best to only stay on rails for a second or two at a time when this happens. Hop on then hop off for best results. You can also do several variations to grinds while in one by pressing different combinations of square circle and triangle. This isn’t very useful, as you’ll find yourself grinding for longer than you should. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Manuals Manuals are down by pressing up down or down up on the ground or right before you land. These have to be balanced. The more time you spend manualing the worse your balance gets. It’s best to only do these for short periods of time. For traveling long distance you should do a manual, jump, flip trick, manual and repeat; this is called bouncing. Beware that you can only balance while in the manual. Remember where it is in the meter before doing another one. Know that if it’s at the edge when you jump it’ll still be there when you land. You can do flatland tricks while in a manual, but it’s not necessarily wise. You shouldn’t be doing manuals long enough to do this, and they also slow you down. If you stop to gain speed while in a manual press left, right + square to go into a spacewalk; this will give you some speed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lip Tricks Go straight toward the lip of a quarter pipe and press a direction plus triangle. Lip tricks are somewhat useless as they break the flow of a combo. They can help your multiplier dramatically however. You can do modifiers to lip tricks. It’s wise to do this for as long as possible once in every combo. Hold it as long as you can and fall back onto the quarter pipe. The meter will be green on the side which it’s safe to let the meter go off. Sometimes you can fall toward either side. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Special Tricks These score much higher than normal tricks and will make up the bulk of you base score. Air tricks and Grab tricks are the ones worth the most. Grind tricks, Manuals, and Lip tricks need to be done for long periods of time to get high scores for them which makes them less valuable. If you use you should only do them when you plan to hold them. The 900 and Indy 900 are the two highest scoring tricks, and it’s in your best interest to use them. Tricks that take longer to do are worth more, but harder to land. Shorter tricks are worth less but easier to land. There are also tricks that you can’t spin as you do. It’s up to you to decide what works best for you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spins When in the air you can spin with either L1 or R1. Spinning multiplies the value of the tricks you do in the air. Spinning 180 multiplies it by 1.5, 360 is 2 etc. If you get big enough air you can use a special trick that can’t be spun then do a spin after it for massive points. A 360 Switch Indy 900 will add over 20,000 to your base score. When you spin, you have to make sure to land fairly straight. If you’re off by too much you’ll fall. You don’t have to worry about this is landing in a grind. PEOPLE WHO SPIN LOOK BETTER THAN PEOPLE WHO DON’T. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Score Degradation Every time you do the same trick it’s value will decrease by 10%. If you repeat a trick it will eventually be worth practically nothing. Vary your tricks to minimize the effect this has on you. Note that doing tricks switch and regular degrade separately. If you do trick regular then switch they’ll both be worth they’re full value. If you then do it again switch it’ll degrade to 10% less. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Switch Press R2 while skating outside of a combo to switch between switch and regular. While you’re skating switch, tricks are worth 10% more. To minimize score degradation you should use both switch and regular tricks. This will happen naturally if you spin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Walking First of all, the parkour tricks are worthless and will be covered later. Walking can serve many purposes to extend a combo, but the worst way to use it is to replace manuals. You only get a few seconds of walk time every combo, so don’t waste them. Long travel on the ground should be done bouncing, not walking. However, if you expect that you’re manual balance to too bad to use, then it’s better to walk instead of manual. If you find that you’re about to land awkwardly and fall, land in a walk instead. If you’re going to slow and need to speed up significantly get off your board and get back on. If you need to make a sudden stop/turn, land on your feet. The best way to get back on your board is to press L1 + R1 while walking. This increases your speed, but more importantly it stops your walk meter faster than jumping and doing a cave man. If your feet don’t touch the ground, the timer won’t start, and it is better to cave man. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reverts Press R2 or L2 as you land at the bottom of a quarter pipe to revert. Get the timing down because it’s very important; it should become second nature. To manual out of a quarterpipe you have to revert first. Always revert when you land in a quarter pipe, even if you aren’t going to continue the combo. Every revert you do slows you down more, and at some point you’ll do one and be forced to skate in place, walk, or spacewalk. If you ollie after a revert you won’t slow down as much. If it’s possible to ollie out of a revert without crashing then do so. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Combos As I said before, to get high scores you want a high base score and high multiplier. Using the tricks listed above you should be able to easily score 5 million points and possibly much more with experience. But one of the key things is knowing how to put it all together in a combo. It’s wise to start a combo with something that will give you a decent base score to on which to build. I tend to start off with 2 Indy 900s and 2 The 900s using two quarterpipes with some space between them. Do a 900 in the quarter pipe, revert, ollie, flip trick, manual and air the next quaterpipe, then repeat. This will get your base score past 40,000 and combined with flips/rolls it can be worth more than 1 million points. *Note: often there are much better ways to get a nice base score to start your combo, but they’ll vary by level. I’ve been able to do this method on almost every level since THPS4. If you know a better way feel free to do it, but this method will carry you far. Next comes the creative part of a combo; increasing your base score and multiplier. There’s no correct way to do this so you can interpret it in pretty much anyway you like. The highest scoring method of doing this to find something that increase your base score significantly and do it as much as possible, but that’s easier said than done. If your going for tags (playing a graffiti style game) this is the time when you want to use as much of the level as possible. Generally, doing lots of grinds, flip tricks, and the occasional big air will suffice. If you play online, watch players better than you and if you see something worth copying feel free. Eventually you’ll find that your balance is going crazy, now it’s time to just try not to fall. Do a lot of bouncing to increase your multiplier, and this is the perfect time to do a lip trick or two until you can’t balance those any longer. Remember to stop before you fall. If you have time left on your walk meter use it to do an air on a quarter pipe. Hopefully, after you’re done all this you’ll have a nice score you can be happy with. ************************************** Worth Knowing ************************************** You should already be able to score a few million points and be able to keep up with and sometimes beat average players online from reading the vital section, but there are also things that will help you tremendously. If you can master the things listed in this section the only obstacle between you and 2,147,483,647 points (the highest possible score) is how far you’re willing to push yourself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spine/Hip Transfers When you do a spine transfer you’ll gain some speed when you revert out. When you spine transfer from high to low, if there’s another quarter pipe in front of you’ll be able to do a decent air trick from it. In these situations is rarely wise to ollie out of a revert. Hip transfers are done the same way as spine transfer but when the quarter pipes are at a right angle. You can use either of these to grind the top of the pipe it sends you in to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Acid Drops When you do an acid drop from a high point to a low quarter pipe you’ll be able to get some speed, and if there’s another quarter pipe in front of you big air is very possible. Another use for acid drops is to grind the top of a quarter pipe. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Leveling Out After jumping from a quarter pipe, if you press R2 you’ll turn parallel to the ground, or do a Spine/Hip Transfer. This will allow you to grind the top of the quarter pipe. If you don’t want to revert because you’ll lose your speed, this is a good alternative. Beware that if there’s an object you can grind above the quarter pipe, you may bail on that if you do a big air trick. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wallplants/Sticker Slaps If need to turn around this is the best way to do it. Of ten you’ll find yourself being launched into walls by rails, so you should Wallplant off of it. Use both of these tricks equally as they do degrade and there’s no reason not to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Noob Lines” The “Noob line” is riding on a rail between to walls jumping and doing a lot of flip tricks and a slightly bigger trick after you wall plant. The more times you grind the same rail the worse your balance will be on the rail, and you can’t do very big tricks from wall plants. This is a simple solution to scoring, but there is always a much better alternative. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lines These are hard to find on your own, but very important if you want to be a true whore. Whoring is playing the game simply to score using any methods outside of cheating. It’s not something I enjoy, but if you’re trying to get over 75 million points there’s no other way. A good line will take you all over the level letting you get big air tricks and a larger multiplier. Finding the best line in a level isn’t easy. The best way to find them is to watch a good whore and copy them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Basers A baser is a small part of a line that can give you a lot of air so you can get your base score up quickly. Typically, you can find a high drop into a series of quarter pipes, but those don’t exist everywhere. Here is another situation where you should watch somebody better than you and copy them. While a baser isn’t necessary, for people who have trouble getting a good base score it’s important. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Edit Tricks Not to be confused with Create-A-Trick, this is changing the layout of your tricks on your controller. There no correct tricks to select, it depends on what you want. The important part here is your special tricks. For the highest possible scores you’ll want to have as many high scoring tricks as possible and you want to use all of them. I don’t know all the values of the tricks and I don’t intend to find out. My only recommendations are The 900 and Indy 900. If your care more about style than points pick tricks that look good. If you’re able to spin well consider how much you can get by spinning a trick when picking them. If you want to change your normal tricks you can. Take into consideration that you’ll be doing these tricks very often so you shouldn’t pick ones that are hard to do. The way I play, I use flip tricks to haphazardly to use anything slower than the default tricks, but my grab tricks are changed for style. ************************************* Practically Useless ************************************* Things in this section aren’t going to help you to increase your score much and will often break the flow of your combo. Unless you’re working to look better, there’s really no reason to read this section. This guide is being rushed and something had to be cut from it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bert Slides You can use these to make sharp turn at high speed, although instance where you need to do this are rare. The longer you slide for the slower you’ll come out. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Power Slides This is done by pressing Down, Down, R1. You’ll spin around 180 degrees without losing speed. Unfortunately, you can only do this while skating out side of a combo. It is still the fastest way to turn around. It’s very useful to make quick turns while playing King of the Hill ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create a Skater You are your CaS. If you play offline it doesn’t matter at all, but online you look like a noob. If you play well it won’t matter too much, but if you’re only average you face some banishments from server run by jerks: when I host if I need to clear space you’ll probably be first to go. Another note about how you dress your CaS: panda suits are just as bad as not having a CaS at all. Hundreds of people use them and you’ll look just like them. Be creative. =============================================================== Winning =============================================================== In the quest for victory scoring isn’t everything. While scoring is almost always important, it’s only the objective in 1 game. Here I’ll briefly explain what you should do to win in each game, but first you must know what a tag is as well as a couple other concepts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tags Tags are the unit of scoring in graffiti. You tag an object by doing a trick on it. The game remembers the score of the combo in which you got the tag. When you tag an object it will become your color (the color of your name) and you’ll get a point for it. The twist is that tags can be stolen. If somebody else tricks on an object you’ve tagged with a higher scoring combo they steal the tag. You lose the point and it becomes their color. Tagging more than half of the level with a score nobody can beat is a guaranteed win. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Collisions and Slapping When two players collide, the one going faster will slap the other and knock them down. Online collisions are rarely turned on. Because the game lags a lot, online you’ll need to get in front of the person you’re trying to slap because they aren’t really where you see them. The host has an advantage in that wherever they see a player is where they are. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Skating After 0 Sometime called “after time”. When the clock reaches zero you’re allowed to continue your combo until you land or fall. This is a good time to watch other players.Beware that some hosts will turn this off; typically this is don’t by inexperienced hosts that get bored with watching others. You can’t skate after zero in elimaskate. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Trick Attack TA for short. This mode is the simplest. Score as much as possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Graffiti Graff for short. Another simple mode. Get as many tags as you can. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Elimiskate ES for short. This can be played with tags or points. This section is about points, “Elimigraff” is discusses tags. When the timer reaches zero the player with the lowest score is eliminated. If two players are tied for the lowest score they both will be eliminated. When you’re eliminated you may view other players. Use this as an opportunity to learn from them. Combos landed between rounds don’t count. Usually score resets are turned off. When score resetting is on all players will lose all points at the beginning of each round, your special meter will empty, if you’re in a combo when the round start you’ll lose it (you won’t fall, it’ll literally disappear), and score degradation will reset. You have no way of knowing if it’s on or not until the beginning of the second round. If the preceeding happened, it’s on. Usually the game is played with a 30 second time limit on rounds, but sometimes it’ll be played with 1 minute rounds; 2 minute rounds are extremely rare. When score resetting is on, you need to be fast and consistent. Score as much as you can within the time limit and make sure to land before the time hits zero. I find it’s best to build a decent base score first and then focus on your multiplier. Use your special tricks as much as possible. Fall and you’re screwed. When score resetting is off strategy will come into play. Very high scoring combos take much longer than the 30 seconds you’re usually allowed, so you’ll want to go several rounds without landing. However, if you don’t land you run a big risk of ending up in last place. This gets very unpredictable when everybody is evenly matched. I usually try to land at least 1 million points during my first combo in the first round, and then hope I can continue my second combo into the third or fourth round, but doing this isn’t a guaranteed win. Often people jump from last place to first place, so be wary of the scores. If you see red text on your screen telling you you’re in last place you must land or face elimination. If you’re told by red text how far ahead of last place you are, unless you’re confident the last place person won’t beat your score, you should land. Also, because of score degradation, it’s better to save your special tricks for your larger combos. The most important thing is not to fall behind early, and you’ll be fine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Elmigraff” This is Elimiskate with tags instead of points, and with good players it can be insanity. All the stuff I said about Elimiskate still applies, but now you have to worry about stealing. It’s possible to be relaxed in first place then suddenly find your self on the brink of elimination because somebody stole most of your tags. For at least the first round you may want to try and tag more obscure areas. The more often people touch an object the more likely it is that somebody will tag it with a high score. When you start in the second round you want to play it’s like Graffiti. Score as much you can while tagging as much as you can. It’s best not to land every round, but beware of the scores. People like to land within the last 5 seconds and this can be painful if they’re stealing from you. If you think you’ll be eliminated land, other wise keep skating and hope for the best. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Combo Mambo CM for short. This can be played with either tags or points. Only your highest scoring combo counts, and there once you land score degradation is reset. If you want to play it safe, land before the clock hits zero and then going for another big combo after time. When playing with tags there is still stealing, so you do have to make sure you land a very high combo. The score that counts is the combo that is the highest scoring when you land it. If somebody steals those tags your score will go down. Offline, this is broke when played with tags. It will be scored as normal graffiti and all combos will count. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slap! The goal is to slap your opponents as many times as possible. You slap by riding into them. The player that’s going faster will slap the other. Once time is up you should continue for as long as you can and keep hitting people to rack up points. After time they’ll stay where they are when you slap them opposed to them respawning when you slap them in game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pot O’ Gold The goal is to either get points or tags while in possession of the pot. If you land a combo without the pot you won’t get the points. If you have the pot and land a combo you will get the points. If you’re in a combo when somebody takes the pot from you, you’ll fall. If your in a combo when you get the pot you can continue your combo. Doing a big combo then getting the pot before you land is a good way to win, but it’s not easy. After time you can continue skating, so if the person with the pot lands before you, steal it from them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Capture The Flag Steal your opponents flag from their base and return it to yours while keeping your flag at your base. Ride over the flag to take it from the base. Hit an enemy flag carrier to return your flag if they have it, or take another team’s. You can only carry 1 flag at a time. If two flag carriers collide, the one going faster will slap the other and if possible return the flag. When you’re playing with a time limit, it’s a good idea to try and get points after time is up, but don’t fall with the flag or your team won’t be able to recover it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ King of the Hill The goal here is to hold the crown for the assigned amount of time. You’re slower when you have the crown. Slap the player with the crown to steal it. There are a lot of players that have some mastery of flying around the level in a way that’s almost impossible to follow. In this and scavenger hunt knowing the levels very well helps more than being able to score. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Scavenger Hunt You spend the first half of the game hiding your tokens and the second half hunting down everybody’s. Try to put yours in a place where you can get them easily but other people won’t. I prefer to put all five of mine together somewhere that it’s not obvious how to get to. A lot of people hide their coins within glitches. This game has nothing to do with scoring. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fire Fight Shoot fire balls at your opponents. Doing big combos will make your fireballs bigger and more powerful. It’s very possible (a necessary) to kill people in one hit. Once your balls are big enough spray all over the level. Remember to shoot backwards if nobody’s in front of you. You can fire up to four balls at once and doing so will cover a very large area. Avoid common scoring lines or you risk being fried before you have enough points to do any thing decent. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Goal Attack Complete the goals as fast as you can. The goals are the same as the classic mode goals on sick. If you play this a lot it’d be wise to memorize this, but it’s not something I’d bother with. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Horse (2-player only) You get ten seconds to start a combo, and you can continue for as long as you like. Score as much as you can. ***************** Style ***************** While this isn’t really important, it does matter. A lot of people think that scoring is everything, but many don’t and I’m one of them. While it’s good to go into a server and just be unbeatable, that doesn’t make you interesting to watch. While technically it doesn’t matter, if you have style you’re going to be more interesting to watch and generally be more able to adjust do different situations. The basic things to do when styling are to spin and not get repetitive. You should also make an effort to use things like spin outs and bert slides and to avoid walking or losing speed. There’s also the thing called improv, short for improvisation. Doing this will yield lower scores than lines, but you look cool. The key principle is to be unpredictable and creative. =============================================================== Copyright Information Copyright 2005 Alfred Blackman III (Sik and Twizted). This document is may be printed for personal use. It may not be posted in whole or in part on a site other than gamefaqs.com. You may not link directly to this document without permission. If you’d like to please contact me at t3h_nO_ob ( at ) yahoo.com