BMX XXX review (Xbox)

Aside from the main career mode, you can also play in a few different two-player multiplayer contests. There's a simple score-based contest, a highest-combo competition that strips the losing player down to his or her underwear, and a mode that puts one player in charge of collecting all the boom boxes in a level while the other player remains stationary, armed with a collection of different weaponry, such as a grenade launcher, a sniper rifle, and rockets, and tries shoot down the other player and prevent the boom boxes from being collected.

BMX XXX is an M-rated game, and it takes advantage of that fact whenever possible. Aside from the dopey, junior-high-school humor, the game swears up a storm in every situation, from its cutscenes to its goal descriptions to the random things that people say when you ride near them. It also contains female toplessness of the polygonal and real-world variety. However, you'll have to do well at the game to actually unlock any of that stuff. The challenge levels have three video clips apiece, and the two competition levels both have one clip that is unlocked when you place first. Each clip is a brief shot of a stripper dancing. Not all the clips include topless strippers. Rounding out the M-rated madness is a mostly uncensored soundtrack. Racial slurs and drug references are edited out. Considering that much of this game's marketing campaign was centered on the concept of "keeping it dirty," you would think that it would go all the way, which makes the soundtrack editing seem really strange.

BMX XXX isn't a very good-looking game. The levels are large and look fine, but the riders look rather lifeless and don't animate especially well. The flatland tricks are the biggest offender in the animation department. The rider simply jerks from position to position when you move from one flatland trick to another. The models used in the goal cutscenes are shabby as well. A little lip movement on their part would have breathed a bit of life into these sequences.

With the exception of the chatty pedestrians and the licensed soundtrack, BMX XXX is a very quiet game. There isn't much noise to riding the bike, grinding, or anything like that. And while the pedestrians are quick to talk whenever you ride near them, most of them have only one phrase. When you're attempting to perform a trick in a specific spot of the level and failing repeatedly, hearing the same jackass shriek about his kid's college fund over and over again really doesn't help matters. The soundtrack is a weird mix of newer and older material, containing older tracks from Green Day and 311 and, in an inspired choice, Motley Crue's "Girls, Girls, Girls." Saliva, N.E.R.D., and several other acts are also included. The game also has custom soundtrack support.

Calling BMX XXX a mature game is probably the biggest joke of them all. Sure, it has a lot of cursing, strippers, and other "adult" stuff, but the game feels like it was written by and for a collection of eighth graders. Even if mindless jokes about sex and poop are right up your alley, the voice work and writing in BMX XXX are so bad that everything that's supposed to be funny simply falls flat. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Like most games that shoot for comedy, BMX XXX isn't funny. The design for the gameplay and goal system feel unfinished. If one of the two aspects were strong, it'd be easy to call the other an afterthought and move on. But aside from making the "groundbreaking" move of featuring a lot of cursing and strippers, BMX XXX doesn't do anything particularly well. If you're interested in the alternative sports genre, games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 and Aggressive Inline make BMX XXX look pathetic by comparison. If you're looking for a comedy with a bit of an adult edge, stop messing around and just go rent Porky's, Revenge of the Nerds, or National Lampoon's Animal House.