Developer
Midway Sports Asylum

Released: July, 2002
Genre: Sports
Players: 2
ESRB: Teen

8
8
8
9
8.8

Supported Features:

Based and officially licensed on the recent PPV event, Gravity Games, Gravity Games Bike: Street. Vert. Dirt. lets you assume the role of one of 21 unique BMX riders in some of the most extreme courses and adventure-based arenas in BMX gaming history.

Here is your complete line-up of extreme features:

• 21 Unique Riders - including top pros: Dennis McCoy, Fuzzy Hall, Andre Ellison, Leigh Ramsdell, Jamie Bestwick
• 10 Insane Tracks featuring large freestyle environments complete with obstacles and quest-like challenges.
• Ride on Fuzzy Hall’s custom backyard course created exclusively for this game.
• Realistic Rider Animation featuring more than 400 motion-captured moves
• 5 Insane Game Modes
• Easy-to-Learn Trick and Combo System with more than 1,500 tricks to learn and master.
• Two-Player Competitions including Grind Attack, High Five, Best Run, High Score, and Team Attack
• Exclusive DVD content including interviews, and behind-the scenes making of the game videos

The career mode is broken up into several huge areas and you are given a lengthy task list and a short timer to complete as many tasks as you can. By completing a prerequisite amount of tasks you can unlock additional arenas with more tasks to complete. Tasks range from arena specific environmental goals to standard trick scoring challenges and locating icons and letters to spell out G-R-A-V-I-T-Y – yes, two more letters than Hawk’s S-K-A-T-E spelling bee challenge.

Unlike Hawk, Gravity Games Bike comes with no tutorial whatsoever. I’m not sure the reasoning behind this decision, but it was a grave omission in my opinion. Perhaps Midway assumes that anyone playing this game is a seasoned X-Game junkie, but for somebody new to the genre, being forced to learn during actual gameplay with no instructions or trick tutorial is unusually cruel. Fortunately, there is a Free Ride mode that lets you practice your tricks and perfect your skills before tackling the lengthy career mode.

Gameplay is fairly simple; especially if you have played any other type of extreme sports game. The analog stick moves your rider forward and turns them while the various buttons do bunny hops, grinds, and air tricks. The right and left triggers perform rotations and using all of these buttons in various combinations and sequences will enable you to perform over 1,500 authentic and fantasy tricks; many of which are rider specific.

Courses range from some unique fantasy levels like the Acid Factory (that looks remarkably like Tony Hawk’s Foundry level), to a Train Depot, and Oil Refinery. You can also race on official Gravity Games courses and even compete in the actual Gravity Games. And when you think you are ready, pedal your bike over to Fuzzy Hall’s house and take a spin on his custom backyard course.

These levels are huge and will offer you many hours of exploration, which is good because you will be replaying them countless times. By design, the game only gives you a few minutes to complete various tasks. You will need to pick and choose the tasks you can complete immediately while others will require you to memorize the location of several letters or objects and the fastest route to reach them. Smashing ten fluorescent lights in the Acid Factory is much more likely on your first run than finding and collecting all seven letters to spell GRAVITY.

Additional levels are unlocked by completing a certain amount of tasks. This means you can unlock the first few levels pretty fast, but later levels will require you to be more thorough in your task completion, as the number of tasks ramp up significantly to unlock the final levels.

One nice benefit of having the game designed around three-minute sessions is that multiple players can team up to complete the career mode and nobody has to wait too long for their turn at the controller. You may have gamers who are stronger at certain aspects of this game allowing you to divide the task list up accordingly.

There are 21 riders you can choose from including many professional riders that will be familiar to anyone who follows the sport of BMX racing. You can outfit these characters in a variety of clothing and gear and pick from top manufacturer bikes including my personal favorite, Diamondback. There are some fantasy characters including the requisite “biker babe” and even some riders you will need to unlock.

The levels are insanely huge and deviously designed to offer excellent replayability. You can grind on just about everything in sight, and there is always a vert within a few bike lengths to catch some mad air and pull of some major scoring stunts. Environments are interactive and you can activate switches, knobs, levers, wheels, etc. to complete tasks and reveal new areas to explore. In the Acid Factory, you can drain the acid pool which not only makes the level a much safer place, it also completes one of your tasks and opens up a large basin perfect for ripping some major air tricks.

There is a gritty realism to the overall visuals in this game. The color palette is a bit boring with lots of earth tones and a washed-out intensity in both the indoor and outdoor tracks. What little color there is seems to be passed through a filter that drains it of any vibrance and keeps it in check with the rest of the course. It may be boring but at least it's consistent and probably more realstic.

The animation is flawless with over 400 motion-captured moves performed by Jamie Bestwick and digitally transferred into your Xbox. Moves are realistic and transitions between the various stunts blend together for combos that look like they were taken right from the video footage found in the bonus DVD content.

The camera works about 95% of the time, but in some instances where you have to turn your rider around sharply there is a significant lag in camera rotation that will have you riding into the camera lens, essentially riding blind. It’s only mildly annoying and never caused me to dump the bike. There are some equally impressive camera angles when catching some crazy air and the camera will whip up above the rider catching them at that moment of zero-gravity where they are just hanging in mid-air.

The DVD video content is excellent in quality and the segments are surprisingly longer than we have come to expect from bonus videos. The first two movie segments are 10-12 minutes in length each and rival anything you might see on ESPN. I found them not only entertaining but extremely informative, offering great insight into the riders and the sport of BMX racing.

Thankfully, and of no great surprise, Gravity Games Bike features a killer soundtrack with hot tunes from; 311, Adema, Disturbed, Reveille, Sevendust, Sugar Ray, and Verbal Assault. There are 45 musical tracks that you can randomize or use to create your own custom playlist, assuring that you will never get bored with the music.

When you finally complete or tire of the single player experience you can look forward to several fun and challenging two-player competitive modes. These will keep you and your friends occupied for even more hours of BMX competition. With so many game variations and the huge library of tricks to master, this is one game that won’t start collecting dust for many months to come.

If you are new to the extreme games genre then the lack of any kind of tutorial will be your only obstacle in what is otherwise a very thorough and highly entertaining BMX gaming experience, so saddle up and prepare to defy gravity.