This genre of game is relatively new to the gaming world and now it has graced the Xbox in the way of Dave Mirra BMX 2. So let the stunts begin.
And of course that is what this game is all about. Attempting sometimes baffling stunt manoeuvres that simply are so baffling and complex that I guess even Dave Mirra himself wouldn’t attempt it, but that makes the game more fun.
For example who in their right mind would be given the task by some rider you meet to leap daringly over a moving police car on a busy city street, and then even more astonishingly you actually thrust your foot on the pedal and off you go pedalling away with your heart racing and actually attempt the challenge.
Well that’s just the beauty of gaming isn’t it. Real stunts with a twist.
To progress through the game and get the extra courses you have to complete certain tricks. These can be relatively simple and others are just completely mad, but luckily the mad part is what helps make this game interesting to keep playing. First a Rookie challenge where tricks earn points and of course the more complex the trick the more points you earn. You have to reach a given amount of points to progress to the Amateur Challenges. This is where the challenges really take place. After completing the listed 3 tasks you then have to find a rider and talk to him to find a secret new task to complete and when all done you then progress to Professional.
The game features 14 characters and has 10 varied levels. Trick wise the game boasts a massive 1500 tricks. Now that should keep you busy.
The visuals are both pleasing and unfortunately not perfect. One lovely point for the graphics are the blades of grass that cover some of the more luscious levels. They are all over the place and make for a very pleasing visual experience. Unfortunately a lot of the undulations in the ground are represented by very harsh polygons and can look quite blocky and uninteresting compared to the grass on top. This aside though enough thought has gone into the rest of the graphics to save this game. It is only really the landscapes that suffer. The rest of the game can have some really nice visuals.
A fine addition to this game is the wacky areas you find as you progress through the game. If you thought jumping over moving trains was weird, wait to you see the later levels. Complete cities, fun parks and other completely wonderful play areas surround this game. All the time you want to explore for that very steep high hill in which you can pull off the most elaborate stunt to impress your mates, and in fact that is what has happened to me.
A mate of mine decided to have a go on this game. After realising the time he finally went home for something to eat after spending all morning showing off his newly found skills and beating all my high scores. 10 minutes later he was back pulling off even more spectacular stunts and completing all the challenges. It was only when he had to pick up someone from work, I finally got another go on my beloved Xbox.
You see this is the power of these types of games, and in particular this one. The competition of getting the best score in games almost vanished after the days of the Megadrive and SNES, but thanks to games as good as this one we can now go through the agony all over again. After sitting watching my mate though I realised how irritating the music was. Over and over the music seems to repeat until I finally told him to put some of my stored music on. If this game hadn’t had this option, it would have scored really low due to the fact that you can literally play this game for hours without a rest and when you are that unfortunate person doing something else and not actually playing the game, you have to listen to the music over and over again. More variation would have helped, but this is not a problem thanks to the Xbox stored music.
If you ever dreamed of death defying stunts, then this is the game for you. If not the most amazing graphically, then the most rewarding game to play. Be warned though, maybe this game should come with a health warning like “You may miss important meals when playing this game!”. It is really that good.