"Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2" - Gamecube

The success of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in 1999 on the PS1 sparked some competition, and within that competition was a 2000 PS1 game called Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. Apparently Dave Mirra was a BMX rider who held the most medals in the X Games in the BMX category. On Wikipedia, I learned that the original game had ragdoll physics, and got curious--

As soon as I looked at a video of the game for two seconds, I knew it was developed by Z-Axis (later Underground Development until their 2010 closure), who had developed Thrasher: Skate and Destroy just a year earlier. My brother and I used to play it constantly on a demo-disc just to mess with the hilariously glitchy ragdoll physics which would cause the character to slam into the ground and bounce 10 feet in the air unexpectedly.

Unfortunately, they fixed the ragdoll physics in the real game, which I eventually purchased, and was greatly disappointed that they were no longer so silly.

Anyway, in 2001, Z-Axis apparently felt Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX needed a sequel on this up-and-coming Gamecube (and PS2 and Xbox) console, and so they made the sequel... Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2.

If it doesn't have glitchy ragdoll physics I'm really going to be disappointed.

Let's play:

----- Playthrough -----

My desire for glitchy ragdoll physics didn't go unmet.

Dave Mirra Extreme Highway Face Grinding 2

Anyway, this may come as a surprise to you, but Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 is, in fact... a BMX game.

Booting the game up will present you with a few options on the main menu. The main four worth talking about are Proquest, Session, Freeride, and Park Editor. It'll probably be easiest to talk about Proquest first.

In Proquest, you pick one of the riders in the game and follow their trail to becoming a pro (hence the name of the mode). Far from having anything to do with doing shows or races, the road to pro BMX is paved with going around to a bunch of locations in the middle of nowhere and doing tricks that other BMX people challenge you to do.

"Try getting in the dumpster and staying there for 10 hours, Mirra" [snickering]

In each location you unlock, other BMX riders will be stationed around the map, and you'll be given sets of three challenges and have to find the fourth challenge by talking to someone who has an idea they want you to try. These challenge sets raise in difficult from rookie -> amateur -> pro -> hardcore -> one final "insane" challenge, that the person always tells you has never been done before.

Never once in history has the legendary Slim Jim to Exit Sign transfer occurred.

The difficulty of these challenges is pretty all over the map, especially in the hardcore section. Often I found one of the hardcore challenges to be much harder than the "insane" challenge that was required of me, and had a hard time completing it, but luckily you only need to finish through the "pro" challenges to unlock the next map.

As you complete challenges, you'll gain "respect points," and raising your amount of these points is what unlocks the rest of the game. When your respect goes up, your rider will gain more sponsors, more bikes, a new outfit, and eventually-- the next line of modes, which are "competition" modes. In these, you have to play through the maps again, but now doing two sets of 3 minutes in which your goal is to do as many different tricks in as many different locations as possible on the map. This is probably the worst part of the game, to be honest.

Doing tricks lacks the appeal of being challenged to find and destroy things with your bike.

By the time I finished the most of the challenge modes on the maps and had tried the competition mode, I decided that the 10 hours I had been playing was quite enough for me to write this article. I was still having some fun doing the challenge modes, but the competition modes were just repetition and I really needed to get on with this (I've taken my full week and more on this one...), so I don't know if something else comes at the end. Sorry, but if you want to play it, you can find out.

No matter what you think of the game, you'll enjoy the bails anyway.

Session mode is simply one of the trick sessions from the competition challenges in Proquest, but at your leisure. Freeride is exactly what it sounds like-- riding around in a park with freedom to do whatever you want. In the park editor, you can create your own park from a bunch of pre-selected parts by placing them on a grid, if that's what you're into.

Behold: BowlBridge Town

There's a number of videos to unlock in "Cool Stuff," which presumably unlock as a result of completing each rider's Proquest as well (which all have separate point values if you want to play Proquest like 10 times), and that seems to be just about it as far as I can tell.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
About 10 hours.

How much did I beat?
Most of the challenge levels, 1 of the competition levels.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

There's no tutorial, and some of the lack of clear instruction gave me pause in the first hour or so, but a healthy amount of experimenting with mashing buttons and seeing what they do, combined with reading the descriptions of the challenges and trying to piece together what they wanted from me, eventually led to a pretty total understanding (as far as I know) of what was available to me as a player.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

Some of the challenges in this game are hard, and some of them are very easy. The game really doesn't have a stable difficulty level, and sometimes that can be pretty frustrating. You can usually count that the hardest challenges will be harder than the easiest ones, but in some levels, the 'hardcore' challenges might include on that takes you 10 seconds to pull off, and one that takes you an hour and a half of trying.

Mostly though, it's pretty rewarding to pull of tough challenges and there's always a sense of progress since you're always working towards something. The point system provides a good measurement of your completion and how far along you are, and unlocking one level at a time provides a good sense of focus.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

With 10 levels or so in Proquest mode, plus a second game mode to play through them again, and some 10 characters to do this all for if you really want to, I imagine you could probably easily spend over 100 hours completing this game with everyone. I don't know how long it would take to beat it with one character, but after around 10 hours, I had about 20,000 respect points out of the maximum 50,000 for the first character.

There are a surprising amount of tricks in the game, but one is pretty much as good as another and there's little strategy as to picking which one you want to do or why.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The game looks pretty good, and models of the riders have faces that at least resemble the real life people they're supposed to be, though most of these people have faded into obscurity since 2001 so I can't tell for sure.

I mean I assume he looks kinda like that, PS1 Hagrid vibes aside.

Anyway, it runs at a smooth 60 FPS and feels good to look at while you're playing it, even in 2019.

The bike sounds and stuff are about as good as you expect from a modern-ish game (fine/good) and the soundtrack is pretty much 100% just licensed pop songs from the late '90s. As with FIFA Soccer 2002 it's pretty hard to give a game credit for licensed music, but it's all pretty decent stuff.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I like the goofy ragdolls, but I don't really have a love for the Tony Hawk games which this feels like a direct rip-off of, and I certainly don't have any personal connection to BMX, so I'll have to say no for the most part.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

This game is actually surprisingly fun for what it is. I feel it would be a stretch to list it on my "favorite games," but I had fun with my time with it to the point I wanted to keep playing it even after the week was up. Still, I only have so much time and want to get to other things.

If you want to play this kind of game ('xtreme' sports, like a Tony Hawk game), I really don't think you'll be disappointed. If this isn't your kind of thing, you'll probably be very disappointed.

That's about the best I can hype/warn you.

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