It's the potential that really bums us out about this game. The graphics aren't pretty -- but you can see well enough to tell where the jumps are, how they're set up and how to get your biker (you can choose from six, all with different stats) to hit the ramp you want. There are three different types of tracks -- freestyle, half-pipe and a dirt track where the bikers simply ride over a series of jumps pulling off tricks.
The game even contains a nice variety of tricks, triggered by hitting the D-pad and the A or B button. Each trick is worth a different number of points, with more difficult tricks getting the higher point value. Players use the tricks to rack up points in order to complete the stage, at which point they earn cash that they can spend on upgrading their bikes.
But that's where the game falters. There's one trick, the No-Hander, that's worth 250 points. Pulling it off requires hitting down on the D-pad and pressing B. The trick also requires a very short time to pull off, which means it's easy to do multiple times in a single jump. Soon after this discovery (which took us about five minutes of gameplay to find), we were able to blaze through every track by simply finding the nearest half-pipe and hitting this trick multiple times each time we were in the air. After a while of not crashing, the riders get higher and higher on each jump. Once we started catching serious air, we could pull off the No-Hander at least five times in a single jump -- that's 1250 points at once. Considering most tracks only require a few thousand points to clear, there was no longer any challenge. Even in the Hard mode, we were often able to get very nearly double the points required to finish the stage.
Admittedly, before we used this trick the game was very challenging. In some cases, it was too challenging, since it seemed as though we never could get the timing of the bunny hop down to carry the bike over certain obstacles.
After a stage, players can buy parts for the bike, which does seem to improve performance. However, using the No-Hander trick, we were able to buy the most expensive item in all the lists within the first few stages, which made the later stages even easier (at some points, we could pull off the No-Hander eight times in a single jump).
For players who don't use the game's built-in cheat, there's at least a little bit of fun to be had. The freestyle tracks are varied, and contain a lot of nice jumps. The half-pipe courses get old pretty quick, but the dirt jumping, while not terribly exciting, is at least different.
Bottom Line: There's a lot of wasted potential here. It could have been pretty good, but comes off as a mediocre attempt at capturing the thrill of BMX biking.
