Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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Extreme biking comes to PlayStation, but is there room for extreme sports games now that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater has locked up the market?
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Chain Gang
For the past five years, America has been bombarded with extremes, including extreme sports, extreme foods, extreme film making. Not unexpectedly, extremes have found their way into the videogame world. One of the most recent extreme activities to make its way to the forefront is freestyle BMX biking, and Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX brings the sport to PlayStation this month. Cool bikes, pros that ride for the love of the sport, and huge corporate sponsors like Slim Jim. What could be better?
At first glance, DMFB is a bit scary to look at. It uses the same engine that the ill-fated Thrasher Skate and Destroy game crashed with, but fortunately, it plays a bit better than Thrasher. Unfortunately, it doesn't play a whole lot better, but once you get the hang of the control scheme, things start looking up. To really enjoy Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, you will need to exercise your patience.
Bike Parts Look Like Ninja Parts
Possibly the most frustrating aspect of Thrasher were the wipeouts. The game featured a Skeletal Dynamics System that generated real-time crashes based on the circumstances of each fall. It's a cool idea, but it takes up a lot of time, and after the third time you see your character flop around at the bottom of an empty pool you just wanna skip the bails and get on with the riding. To avoid those cursed bails, all you have to do is avoid falling. For the most part, the game's controls are responsive and allow you to straighten out before landing, but sometimes the game will make you bail for no apparent reason, adding to the necessary patience factor.
Probably the coolest feature of the game is the open trick system which enables you to bust trick after trick and combine several tricks into one. For example, you can pull a backflip, perform a no-footed air, then (and this is the cool part) you can perform a no-footed backflip. That holds true for a ton of tricks; if you can think of the combo you'd like to perform, you can probably do it. It is a really cool feature, and Acclaim says over 1300 trick combos are possible. Several modes of play are available, including a career mode called Proquest, free ride, and 2 player. To help you get loose in each mode, you can choose from any of ten pro BMXers with different looks and abilities.
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX looks a lot like Thrasher. It's a bit grainy and the colors are a little flat, but it's certainly not horrible. The soundtrack is a little weak and the songs get old pretty quickly, but when is that not the case? Just keep your stereo warm and crank up your own tunes, and you'll be rocking. The in-game sounds are solid, with the sound of pegs grinding and bikes slamming onto concrete hitting it right on.
Bikers Smell Funny
Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX is in no way flawless, but once you get the hang of it, it's a fun game. If you like biking, and enjoy exercising patience, this might be the ultimate game for you.
