Reviewed: July 17, 2003
Reviewed by: Jason Porter

Publisher
Gotham Games

Developer
Gotham Games

Released: June 30, 2003
Genre: Racing
Players: 2
ESRB: Everyone

1
1
1
1
1.0

Supported Features:

Gotham Games, based out of New York City, are a veritable video game sweatshop, churning out budget PS1 titles at an alarming rate (Big Strike Bowling, Patriotic Pinball and ATV Mania are all budget PSX titles from Gotham). MM2 is one of those, being the sequel to the equally ill-received original Motocross Mania. This newest installment in the (hopefully short-lived) series claims to have "all the action of the first Motocross mania, but with better turning accuracy, improved graphics, updated bikes and more breathtaking stunts". Whether these claims are true or not should by now be obvious to most readers, but we'll get into more details in a moment.

The game contains a one- or two-player Arcade mode, a Career mode which lets you accrue points through races at various skill levels in order to unlock some extra courses and bikes, and a Track Editor for designing your own courses. Its suggested price? $10. To find out whether it's worth the green, read on....

One of the first major complaints I had about MM2 was its wanton (it seemed wanton to me) assumption that I had an intimate working knowledge of the technical terms surrounding BMX racing. I do not. It took me a few races to figure out what the difference between Torque and Top End exhaust systems was (torque gives better acceleration but lower cruising speed... I think...). Anyone can figure out what their best configuration is after some practice, but this feature is unfair to the casual player. It also got me to believe that I was going to be playing a more realistic, difficult "simulation"-style racer like Gran Turismo, rather than a Ridge Racer-like, arcade-style one. Boy, was I wrong.

When you've finally navigated through all of the submenus, you'll sit through a fairly fast load screen. From what I gather by reading Aaron Daigle's review of the original Motocross Mania on this site, this is a major improvement. Kudos to Gotham Games for realizing that an already mind-numbing game isn't helped by sleep-inducing load times.

Unfortunately, the quicker load time also hurts this game because it brings you to the actual gameplay that much faster. Despite the relative wealth of complicated, technical-sounding menu options, this game is an arcade-style racer, and an absolutely miserable one at that. Honestly, Road Rash 2 for the Sega Genesis puts this pile of horse crap to shame even by today's standards.

The three modes are fairly self-explanatory. Arcade mode, where you will spend most of the 90 minutes you'll be able to tolerate playing this game, includes a one- or two- player race and practice mode. The two player race is your best bet for having a little fun with this title, since the computer AI sucks so horribly that with a bit of practice, winning most of the courses will become painfully easy.

Career Mode is where you can save a racer (i.e., name a racer... at last!) and work your way through a couple hours of utterly mind-numbing laps in order to unlock new courses (mostly longer versions of old courses), a few more bikes and the loudly-advertised 250cc speed class, which feels entirely the same as a 125cc race. This part of the game is so unrewarding and repetitive that you may run screaming back to your retailer demanding a refund.

And coming back to the AI, the big differences between Amateur and Professional-level bikers are as follows: slightly faster bikes, slightly larger courses, more tightly grouped riders. That's it. They'll still all follow each other to their collective doom and slam into the same wall on every lap. You can still abuse the game's shoddy physics to gain the lead. Thank goodness, too, since in a "fair" race, bikers will inexplicably shoot ahead of you, keeping you in 4th place permanently unless they all wipe out. Like I said, the AI is beyond stupid in MM2 and actually detracts from the gameplay.

The one bright spot in the game is the Track Editor... but it's still a 2-watt bulb. Here, using a surprisingly easy interface, you can build a track piece by piece on a grid, save it, and then open it up to race later. There are a very limited number of piece styles (only 2 turn tiles!), and you have to set special Start and Finish pieces on the course, so starting, say, on a turn or on bumpy ground is out of the question. Gotham Games would have done better to set Start and Finish overlay tiles that players could paste over any two squares. There's no option to customize the course skin or background; you'll always be riding a plain dirt course lined with bales of hay, with mountains in the distance. Adding some of the more interesting Arcade mode skins (beach, volcano, snow field) would have made the editor much more entertaining. All in all, most people can probably garner a good hour of mild fun from this mode.

The game's physics actually seem worse than what they sounded like in the original MM. You can fly over a bump and towards the edge of a turn, only to be caught by a huge invisible wall (you can't drive off the course, ever) and snapped back to a safe angle without crashing. When you drop down, despite the fact that you were moving very quickly in one direction, you'll usually set off without delay in a completely new direction, with no drawback. This also applies to any jump during which you turn your bike less than about 90 degrees while in the air. In other words, your biker can land sideways while flying straight without wiping out. Try doing THAT at home, kids (I'm kidding. Don't). Collision detection is really just a bad joke, and terrain once again has no bearing on the traction of your bike. On top of everything else, at times my bike would simply stop on a course, or turn without my making it turn, or throw my hapless rider to his/her doom while driving straight down a smooth path. I even watched my biker fall through a stone wall once, only to land on another part of the track far below. He was quickly restored to his original position, but come on. This is the kind of inconsistency I would have expected from a 3D game 9 or 10 years ago, not today. But hey, at least you get to bike though a stream of lava. How extreme. Or something.

Controls are clunky and inconsistent. Remember the "improved turning accuracy"? All I have to say to that is that the first Motocross Mania must have had the turning physics of an Atari game. No matter how sharply you turn, there are only two turning animations: regular and powerslide. This means that taking a gentle 15 degree turn looks the same onscreen as a 35 degree one. As far as the "extreme tricks" go, eleven of them are listed in the instructions (out of about 15 possible, I think), which lessens the already miniscule excitement of performing them. As one might expect, all of them are quite boring. Performing tricks raises your "Power Meter," which confusingly looks like a thermometer. For a long time, I thought the meter was an engine temp gauge. A more clearly marked meter would have been a nice touch.

Where should I start? For one thing, the character models are uniform and blocky. I understand that because of their helmets, you won't ever see a face, but in this game it feels like a cop out. Everything is angular and not-quite-human looking. On a brighter note, they did finally figure out how to make the bike wheels round (see screenshots of MM1 for comparison). The total lack of rider customization means that not only can you not choose a color of clothing for your biker, but it actually changes every race. There are also so few pattern skins for the outfits that many races have two bikers dressed exactly the same!

Draw-in is mild on most courses, but on a few it becomes noticeable. More annoying is the fact that your rider jitters like he's having an epileptic seizure all the time. It's not noticeable when you're racing around a curve or over bumpy terrain, but on the straightaways it can get downright painful. Worst of all, this convulsing only gets worse when your biker is at a standstill!

Everything in Motocross Mania 2 is uninspired, and that includes the settings. Out of the sixteen available courses, ten of them feel and look more or less alike: dirt paths with scattered jumps and a few tight curves. The backgrounds range from a drab construction site to a disappointingly boring Volcano stage. The rendered graphics in these stages are laughable: trees are made using the Myst-era technique of taking 2 flat tree images and cross-hatching them, and most of the other things (people, flames [on the volcano level], dirt plumes) are simple, DOOM-style flat sprites. All in all, one of the most graphically dull games that I have ever had the misfortune to experience.

Let's start with the "ambient noise": the bikes themselves. The engines of all 8 bikes on the course make exactly the same drone, which is all right except that this sound NEVER FADES. After about half a lap, I felt like there were hornets nesting in my ears. Luckily, the sound effects can be turned off in the Options menu.

Music in the game is limited to 4 or 5 very forgettable, minute long butt-rock instrumental numbers. I actually didn't mind the soundtrack that much. There was even one song I enjoyed a little (mostly because the main riff was stolen from the first Ridge Racer game). The main problem was that there was, after all, only about 6 minutes of music on the whole disc. The music is also so muted (unless you fiddle with the Options menu) that you won't be able to hear it over the damnably annoying engine drone most of the time. Oh, and there's no reward for finishing first, either. By this I mean no special music or victory fanfare, no cheering, no nothing. You just stop. Sure, THAT'S a big incentive to win.

Lastly, the voice acting. Well.... what's there to say, really? Apparently not much. When you start up, the Gotham Games company screen features some guy saying, "Gotham Games". After that, there are two lines of voice acting in the entire game: "unh" with a male voice, and "unh" with a female voice. Apparently, you race against seven cleverly designed clones of yourself! Or maybe this is just another example of the obvious lack of care that went into making this title.

As far as replay value goes, MM2 is right up there with watching a dryer at the Laundromat: it can whittle away 15 or 20 spare minutes, provided that you don't feel like thinking during that amount of time. Since it is, after all, a racing game, it can always be popped in for a quick round of crappy play. However, since the game is basically no fun at all, I can't honestly see many people doing that. If you need a PS1 racing fix, go rent a Need for Speed title. If you want to play around with bikes, skip this one and go rent a Road Rash game. You get the same crappy physics and low production values, but with a wicked sense of humor that makes it much more entertaining.

MM2 is no better as a 2-player racing game, since unfortunately, its 2-player mode is no more fun than its one player. Considering that you're racing against a human opponent (which usually makes any racing game better), this is quite an accomplishment, in a bad sort of way. Overall, there's no first-play value, much less any real replay value. Most gamers won't even want to look at MM2 after half an hour of messing around with it.

Final Recommendation: This hunk of junk wouldn't even hold up against Rad Racer. Avoid it like the plague.