BMX XXX

Just mentioning the title of Acclaim's latest, BMX XXX, conjures up images of pedal-powered hedonism, protesting parents and tongue wagging from hormone-driven adolescents. In preparation for this review I went out of my way to peruse some of the finer adult movie review sites on the net for clues on how to cleverly refer to naughty things without using naughty words. But after poring over well written reviews for flicks like Midsummer Night's Ream and Breakfast is Tiffany, I quickly realized that there's not nearly enough smut in BMX XXX to warrant a special vocabulary. This is a BMX extreme sports game first and foremost and not some daring new take on the genre. Indeed the basic ingredients for serious debauchery --you know, pimps, hoes, fire trucks and balloons-- are well represented, but they don't come together in a way that changes the game's basic premise of freestyle tricking all over the place for points.

 

However, as a BMX videogame BMX XXX runs into several problems that cannot be masked by the game's sense of humor and semi-nudity. BMX XXX is an extremely linear game in that everything has to be unlocked step by step. In the main Hardcore Tour career mode (the only other modes are create-a-rider and multiplayer) you have no timer to worry about, but your character has a health meter that can run out if you bail too often. New levels are opened up by accomplishing a minimum number of goals in each level. The infamous stripper videos featuring dancers from the world famous strip club franchise, Scores, are the prime unlockables and are associated with the most difficult challenges. The humor of BMX XXX comes through whenever you stop to talk to certain characters who have challenges for you. There are only a handful of character interaction cinemas in each level, but they're full of raunchy jokes, plenty of cussing and eventually a loony explanation for why you need to complete the challenge they give you. Helping a guy who's having trouble doing his business in a portable toilet by mounting it on your handle bars and shaking things up for him is even funnier when that nutball explains it to you. These scenes are entertaining and will yank a few chuckles and guffaws out of the most hardened gamers, but they aren't always as helpful as they should be. In fact the goal system itself isn't very user friendly to begin with. Where Aggressive Inline spoiled us by giving us a shot of the area or object in question, BMX XXX leaves us scrambling to figure out just what the challenge requires more often than not. Usually a clock is counting down while we're trying to figure out which wall or switch we're supposed to wall tap or where the hell that bungee jumper is so we can push him over and this can be extremely frustrating early on. Challenges where you have to find or collect certain objects are different because you're prepared to be a little disoriented as you search. Furthermore, when you do fail a challenge, again we've been spoiled by other extreme sports games, there's no way to quickly re-try that challenge. If it's a challenge from a character you have to pedal your ass back to where you found them and initiate another cinema to start all over again. The levels of BMX XXX aren't any larger or more creative than the levels in either Aggressive Inline or Dave Mirra 2. In fact the overall feeling is that within these giant levels there seems to be more "dead spaces" with no ramps, rails or other trick obstacles to use for tricks. Compare this with the levels of Aggressive Inline where you always seemed to have options in front of you for pulling off different tricks. Too often in BMX XXX you'll find yourself driving to a fun area that has plenty of trick equipment, rather than grinding your way over there and earning points like in A.I. Grinding is more fun than driving no matter what the context.

 

Since health is your only limitation in BMX XXX, accomplishing goals is the only way to receive a health boost. This sort of reinforces the idea that the developers want you to go after the toughest challenges, since once a challenge is done, it's off your list and you can't get anymore health for it. There are exceptions to this since some challenges are always available to you even after you've cleared them, just so you can get replenish your health. Also, bike parts upgrade your bike/rider so that you'll have boosted attributes for speed, manuals, air, etc.

 

Each level has its own set of challenges made difficult by that level's particular layout. The problem here is most of the challenges have the same basic premise from level to level. Collecting five clowns, Godzillas or flatulent construction workers and delivering them to a specific location ends up feeling very repetitive. The same can be said for collecting 45 coins, beer bottles or donuts seen floating about the Bronx, Syracuse or Mall levels. Collecting those 45 items though is how you'll unlock the fine ladies of Scores from deep within BMX XXX.

 

The stripper videos in the game are a big deal for videogames, but not as big a deal as anybody, not Acclaim, the mainstream media nor your knucklehead buddy down the street would have you believe. There are Scores facilities in the Bronx and Las Vegas levels, where it actually makes sense to have those strip clubs, but accomplishing certain goals in each level unlocks new video clips. The big deal is that unlocking stripper videos is certainly a huge departure from merely unlocking a new rider, or new bike or new shoes when you reach a certain level of expertise in a level. I mean, they are professional dancers and some of the best at what they do, or so I've read. There's a particular girl or theme associated with each level so unlocking both videos for the Dam level, for example will get you parts one and two of a dance sequence so if you get attached to one girl, you know you've got more coming. On the other hand, they're only dancing for about 25 seconds and they're strippers, not porn stars plying their trade. The topless nudity is in the context of a dance routine, so teasing and titillating (that word should mean something different than it does) the videogaming audience out there is the mood. It would take a lot more exposure, fluids and other acts for this R-rated content to earn an X rating. Three Xs? That would require farm animals from other planets I think. But within the context of the game as a whole where you're pulling tricks on a bike and interacting with all kinds of colorful characters who happen to curse this time, the strippers are merely a tacked on piece of the equation that says videogames + dirty words + naked chicks = fun for males ages 18-34.

 

The developers did a good job of giving gamers a little payoff early on by making the first video extremely easy to unlock. I say this is a good thing, because from there on out, you're going to be hard pressed to earn every other skin snippet locked up in the game. Unlocking movies comes down to collecting all 45 items of a particular level, clearing all 20 gaps of a particular level and winning both competitions with gold medals. That's a slick way to get some value out of the game, since there's no point in playing XXX if you're not going for the stripper videos.

 

The head to head multiplayer game covers three game types: paintball, skillz and the surprising strip challenge. The latter takes the concept of HORSE a step further by removing clothing items --including big puffy jackets and long pants-- from the loser. The two player games are nice bonuses if you can get into the main game, but there's not much here that won't get you over the hump otherwise. For an Xbox game, BMX XXX looks a lot like a third or fourth generation PlayStation title and this proves to be the game's greatest weakness. The characters in the game look far too blocky to convince me that this is the evolution of the Dave Mirra BMX engine on Xbox. The animation is a mixed bag of good and bad where your rider moves well but other stuff and characters in the environment are awkward and stiff.

 

Not that past BMX games from Acclaim were known for their spectacular character models, but it's clear that Z-Axis didn't attempt to push the envelope here in XXX. Since most Xbox owners are going to create near-nude female characters complete with exposed nether regions, it would've made sense to have, uh, smoother skinned, more authentic looking physiques. After all, players will be unlocking video clips of real exotic dancers for immediate comparison. Staring down the barrel of a colored splotch of fabric wedged between two blocky cheeks for 20 hours can't be healthy for anybody, even people who are into that sort of thing. The characters you meet in the game don't look much better with maybe a few dozen polygons used to "flesh out" their forms. The tricks are animated very well with the rider and bike interacting naturally. It's easy to recognize the difference between an X-Up and an X-Down or a Decade and a Tailwhip with your rider seamlessly transitioning into and out of a trick while in midair and getting full extension in the move. But there can still be awkward moments, usually on the ground and near rails, where your rider will snap and jerk into stalls and grinds or they'll make unnatural, impossible changes of direction

 

There's a wobbly bike animation where your character will lose a little speed as he or she tries to regain their balance after barely landing a sketchy move. A helpful animation like this, though, doesn't explain some of the inexplicable bails and crashes you'll encounter from time to time when you approach certain ramps and rails. Also the range of the "magnetic" grind/stall move is inconsistent to the point where you'll never know if you'll be given the benefit of the doubt and so sometimes your rider will suddenly pop onto a nearby rail or sometimes they won't. There's no indication from the rider animation to indicate whether or not you're going to catch the rail or not.

 

The video quality of the stripper videos is done up with professional quality lighting and filters and might convince you that you're watching an episode of "G-String Divas" but without all of that talking and emoting. The voice acting is surprisingly strong even though it was easy for us to recognize that a few of the characters in the game used the same actor. The accents and dialects are all done perfectly from the disembodied voice of a construction worker stinking up a portable toilet to a Winona Ryder-like shoplifter with an annoying California valley girl whine. Many of the potty mouth jokes are subtle so the crisp delivery of the lines was imperative.

 

The soundtrack, like those of most extreme sports games, is all over the place with a smattering of rock, punk and hip hop tracks. The majority of the cuts are from the eighties and nineties and include songs from De La Soul, Motley Crue and The Neptunes. In fact, once you get to unlocking stripper videos, song titles like "The Magic Number", "Girls, Girls, Girls" and "Lapdance" are "cleverly" (as in not really) repurposed for the video at hand.

 

Sound effects are extremely mediocre. There's a slight rattling sound from your bike whenever you land a trick cleanly on flatland and a metal-on-metal ping when you hit stalls and begin grinds. The characters you can interact with will usually have something funny to say as you pass them by on your way somewhere else and you'll get the panning and proper directional sound.

 

One unnecessarily annoying (as in there's no reason for this) problem with custom soundtracks is how the game will skip from one song back to the first as you pick up and begin challenges. One cut will be playing as you ride up to an NPC and hit Y to speak with them, but when you actually begin pedaling away to do it, ten times out of ten, the game will begin playing whatever happens to be the first song on your soundtrack list. In fact anytime the music stops because of gameplay and starts up again, it will begin with your number one cut rather than progressing through your list of songs in regular order. If the first song of your soundtrack is your favorite, it won't be for long. BMX XXX didn't live up to my expectation because, like many people, I was expecting an evolution of the Mirra franchise with the welcome addition of potty mouth humor and nude women. The women and humor are there, but the evolution just isn't. I think BMX XXX got caught up in a different kind of identity crisis than we've seen before. But looking at it for what it is, either the game needed to have more XXX or a more refined BMX side, but leaving it caught up in the middle where it is now won't be very satisfying for hardcore gamers. Whether or not XXX is a turning point for mature-themed videogames remains to be seen but popularity is a key element for controversy and XXX has plenty of spotlight on it.

Mirra 2 scored a 6.9 last year thereby denying us the humor and irony this time around. A 6.8 and Acclaim owes us one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Done