|
Intro
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you one way to milk a single successful
title from long ago. You see, there once was a game named Tony Hawk's Pro Skater,
and what a glorious and original game it was, for said game enjoyed many accolades
and praises. Of course, as with all good things, the sequels began to come. At
first, they were honest and simple sequels, but with time, they became bogged
down with too many "innovations" and the like, and so something had
to be done to disguise the game engine from being so easily recognized as nothing
than more of the same. Thus, other extreme sports titles were forged, such games
as Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX. It was only a matter of time before these carbon
copies had sequels themselves; this is one such story of such a game. This is
the story of Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2.
Gameplay: 7/10
This particular incarnation of the Mat Hoffman
series includes a handful of modes, which include Road Trip, Session, Free Ride,
and Multiplayer. The latter three are more added entertainment than anything,
for in Session mode you simply choose a level and attempt a single run where you
can attempt to set or break any current high score records. In Free Ride mode,
you ride…well…freely, wherever you want; simple, no? Multiplayer has
many of the same staple game modes found in other Activision O2 games, as well
as a few that are actually rather innovative and fun. Such variants include Graffiti
War, Trick Attack, Tag, Horse, Push (score more than your opponent and their half
of the screen shrinks while yours grows), Free Ride, Treasure Hunt, and my favorite,
Halfpipe Hell. In this mode, you must traverse a series of uphill quarter pipes
to climb to the exit in under a set amount of seconds. This is actually pretty
entertaining, as there is a warm and toasty lava bath waiting beneath you, and
with up to 8 players able to participate in this at once, you're presented with
many opportunities to knock your friends off their bikes in midair and into the
fires below.
The heart of Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 lies within
the game mode of Road Trip. Here, the idea is to complete a series of progressively
difficult sets of tricks and objectives within a level in order to earn more money
to unlock a new stage, along with a new video clip of your current Road Trip character.
Different stages have price values, and so unlocking some will be much tougher
than unlocking others. The different mission objectives range from the simple
"do X trick on Y object", to the even simpler tasks of "collect
X objects" or "touch X objects", and then of course you have the
frustrating high score missions where by some freakish act of divine intervention
you're supposed to somehow score 42,524,423,456,754 points in 20 seconds. Of course,
I'm exaggerating here, but the concept remains the same. Finally, spread throughout
each level are different extras that you can locate and use for your own fiendish
needs, such as new bikes, characters, and costumes.
Much like the objectives,
the tricks themselves range from ones you will likely only ever execute by accident,
to the very easily executed ones, to the "how the Hell am I supposed to do
that" ones. However, I cannot say that the trick system lacks depth since
there are at least eight to ten different tricks that you can execute when either
grinding on objects, or stalling on the top of a ledge; tack on the 16 or so aerial
tricks and the eight quicktricks and you already have more than enough moves to
keep up a nice amount of variation. If that wasn't enough, there's also an additional
31 manual, or "flatland" tricks (ie: tricks you can do without having
to be airborne), as well as a good eight generic and three character-unique adrenaline
tricks which can only be activated when their adrenaline bar has been maxed out,
much in the same style as Capcom's super moves.
And now for the griping.
You see, the one thing that frustrated me about this game was that I would be
told to go and do a certain maneuver in a certain area, and I would have absolutely
no idea how to do the move in question. Even after reading the manual as well
as a FAQ, I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do. As a result, I think
that it would have been very useful to have been shown a demonstration of the
required tricks at the start of the level, so that you'd at least have some conception
of what you're supposed to accomplish.
Graphics: 8/10
The characters, levels, and bikes all look terrific
in this incarnation. The player models themselves are all very detailed and represent
the likenesses of their real world counterparts very well, even down to the body
language that kicks in while riding. Likewise, the levels are all quite detailed
and show off some ingenious design as far as model construction goes. As nice
as these items were, however, the only graphical perk that I really seemed to
enjoy was being able to leave skidmarks with my tires; it's suprisingly fun, and
different colored tires even leave different colored marks!
Sound: 8/10
Mat
Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 offers a rather nice selection of varied tunes with which
to get your biking on, and suprisingly enough, very few songs were so annoying
as to be removed from my playlist. What I liked most about the music -- aside
from the fact that the artists are actually recognizable -- would be the variety
of rock, rap, and the more recently exploited mix of rock/rap; after all, who
among us doesn't enjoy a little LL Cool J? Surely I do, particularly when I'm
grinding my five-speed down an incline rail, and never you mind that I don't actually
ride a bike! Control: 7/10
If there is one thing to say about the control scheme in BMX 2, it would
be that it presents a definite and highly noticeable learning curve. In fact,
I highly doubt that anyone who picks up the game will be able to jump directly
into it with any workable knowledge of how to do anything aside from simply pedaling
forward. This even goes for avid Tony Hawk players, as the physics of a
bicycle are a tad different from those of a skateboard. Some of the more aggravating
issues that I encountered would include having one hell of a time lining up certain
shots to grind objects, not being able to rotate the bike around fast enough when
doing aerial tricks, and of course eating pavement due to a few select collision
issues in some environments. Overall:
8/10
When all is said and done, Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 really doesn't
seem to bring anything to the table that previous Activision O2 games haven't
already. This is actually rather sad when you take into account how many titles
have been made using altered Tony Hawk mechanics, and even sadder when
you consider how many more of these games are destined to be released in the future.
I'm not saying that this is a bad game; just be prepared for the anger derived
from having to earn stupid roadtrip points by doing frustratingly difficult tricks
a little too early on. [
top ] |
