Gravity Games Bike: Street Vert Dirt (PlayStation 2)

Reviewed by

Jeff Gerstmann

on 07/10/2002

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Page 2

Further hampering the gameplay is a long list of bugs that, if Midway had cared more about finishing the game than it did shipping the game on time, should have been fixed. After a wreck, the game respawns your bike close to where you crashed rather than relying on set respawn points or some other safe mechanism. The result is that it's very easy to respawn inside a piece of the level geometry with no hope of escape. Sometimes you'll even crash through walls and locked gates only to appear on the other side without having to actually open the gate via conventional means. It's also extremely easy to get hung up in corners and have no way to turn the bike around, because the front tire will just continually bump up against the walls. Getting hung up on the lips of ramps and other awkward areas is also a constant hassle.

Gravity Games Bike: Street Vert Dirtscreenshot

...but it plays much, much worse.

Graphical glitches also pop up throughout the game. For example, a lot of times you'll notice that you aren't so much riding on the ground as you are in the ground--the bike actually rides lower than the floor plane in some segments of the levels. Shadows break up from time to time, and the rider animation is very jerky. Aside from that, the game has a few decent textures (and a lot of product placement), but for the most part the game has a drab, dull look to it that seems more like something you'd expect to find on the PSOne. The game's sound is almost entirely nonexistent. Most of the levels are eerily silent, except for some occasional pedal noise and the sound of you crashing or landing. The soundtrack features a lot of music, but most of it consists of generic uninspired tracks, including a handful of rap tracks recorded specifically for the game by people who are credited as "special guest rappers" in the manual. Licensed songs include tracks from Sugar Ray, 311, and Disturbed.

Not even a set of multiplayer options ripped out of every other alternative sports game on the market can make up for the broken nature of Gravity Games' gameplay. In short, the game plays like an unfinished product rushed out the door and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. One would hope that Sony's third-party approval process would catch junk like this before it makes it out onto store shelves, but unfortunately, that was not the case this time. As such, do not, under any circumstances, buy, rent, or look at this game.