BMX XXX review (Xbox)

Acclaim and Z-Axis are the publisher-developer duo known for creating the Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX series. The series has always made for a functional entry in the action sports genre, but it's never broken through and reached the bar that the genre's cornerstone, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, sets year after year. The team did, however, make one breakthrough game in Aggressive Inline, an inline skating game that was released across all major platforms earlier this year. While one would expect the pairing's next game to improve upon their most recent work, BMX XXX goes back to its Dave Mirra BMX roots and contains most of the same gameplay problems found in the those games. It's also obfuscated by a layer of raunchy language, full-motion video of strippers, and some of the most confusing goals ever seen in a game of this sort.

The gameplay of BMX XXX is very similar to that of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2. One button is used for tricks, and another is used to modify those tricks. There's actually a considerable amount of depth here, as the game has a ton of tricks when you count up all the modified versions and combinations. However, even with all this variety, none of the tricks feel particularly special or important, and you're left with what seems like a billion different ways to do a tabletop. Little quirks of the Dave Mirra engine pop up on occasion as well. You'll sometimes find yourself able to skid in circles forever, and you can still land just about any vert trick in a stall, which takes all the challenge out of landing tricks. Simply hit the grind button on your way down and you'll catch the rail and stall your way to safety, even if you're headed headfirst into the pavement. The bike will also magically reorient itself to make wallrides, walltaps, and fast plants almost automatic. Sometimes you'll even be able to walltap a ramp as you're coming down, which is another way to guarantee a safe landing. While the genre isn't exactly known for extreme realism, the Dave Mirra engine's unrealistic quirks ensure that BMX XXX's trick system is never challenging.

A few changes and enhancements have been made to Dave Mirra career mode, which makes the game structure a bit more like that of Aggressive Inline and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. You'll enter levels without any sort of timer. You can freely ride around the level, taking on timed goals by speaking to pedestrians. Some goals, such as the ones that challenge you to execute a lengthy combo or reach a certain score, don't require any activation. Your rider has a health meter that is depleted every time you wreck. Completing goals refills the meter, but since you can simply start another run after running out of health, this only has an impact on some of the higher score goals or each challenge level's big collection goal, which has you trying to collect 45 objects in one run. The goals are mostly standard for the genre, but the new twist is that you'll occasionally be able to pick up people or objects. In practice, this is pretty much a gussied-up version of the Tony Hawk 3 goal that required you to find an axe and bring it to a man to cut open a door. The difference is that you'll actually see the rider carrying the object or person in question. Here, you'll find a leaf blower and bring it back to a homeless man so he can use it to launch his plane-shaped cardboard box.

You'll also have to pick up objects or people and take them to specific spots in the level. In this case, you'll see the people--who range from prostitutes to strippers to gassy construction workers--riding on the back pegs of your bike. You can carry multiple monkeys on the bike, so one goal will actually show five monkeys holding onto various spots on the bike as you ride around. This can be amusing, although the excess baggage doesn't actually affect the way your bike handles. In all, each challenge level has 20 goals, three of which are score-based. One is a combo challenge in which you must simply perform a combo that contains a set number of tricks. Each level will have at least one goal that asks you to take five people to a certain point in the level, and there are also a mess of collection goals and a smattering of trick-based goals. Again, it's nothing out of the ordinary, despite the game's theme.

Many of the game's goals are set up by small cutscenes. These cutscenes are where the game displays its sense of humor. Double entendre plays a big role, so you'll get to listen to hot dog vendors talk about their "big wieners" and cart-manning peanut salesmen brag about their "hot salty nut sacks." In another section of the game, you'll encounter a fireman who is in desperate need of water pressure and is clutching his limp fire hose and complaining about his inability to "get it up." Besides being just plain dumb, the goal cutscenes also do an absolutely awful job at setting you up to complete the actual goal. Oftentimes you'll be told to hit a switch or find an item and be left with no idea what you're actually looking for. A brief panning shot of the goal area, showing the switch or item in question, would have made a world of difference.

One early goal asks you to wreck your bike into a "fruitbooter." While it could have clued you in on the fact that "fruitbooter" is a derogatory term for an inline skater by showing a brief shot of the inline skater in question, the game just expects you to already know what it means. Simple things like this make BMX XXX seem sloppy and frustrating. Some goals aren't difficult to understand and complete, yet still manage to make no sense. On a snowy city level, a weatherman has promised snow to his viewers, but it isn't snowing. Being the helpful action sports athlete you are, it's up to you to make it snow and save the weatherman's job. The actual goal asks you to find and ride your bike over four steaming manhole covers. How does riding over a manhole cover make it snow? You'd at least expect that this would be revealed once you actually complete the goal, right? Wrong. Instead, the game merely congratulates you for making it snow. That's it. No explanation whatsoever. You don't even get a cutscene that shows it actually snowing. It's just stupid.