Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX

"Excuse me, as I must go get my bike and pretend to be that red dude from Excitebike."

Mat Hoffman is a good game for any sports fan. It's a game where you go through different levels achieving goals from collecting the letters S-K-A-T-E spread out through the level, to scoring a certain amount of points. The point system in this game is based upon trick combos, where you do one trick, then if you do another trick in the same string as the previous trick, then the point value of that trick is added to the total and a multiplier is added to the score, and it increases for each trick in a string. If you don't successfully complete a trick, IE hitting the ground, then all points for that trick is lost. There is also a moderate amount of difficulty to be found in this game. Expect a slightly harder version of Tony Hawk in terms of level of difficulty.

The game features 8 pro bikers, of which none are females, which takes gender equality out of the game, unless you count the hidden Granny character, which is put in there for joking sake. There are 8 levels in this game, which have unique designs of their own, ranging from a warehouse to a construction yard to the outside of a chemical treatment plant.

The graphics in this game are good, but they have a little pop-up, which was non-existant in the DC ports of Tony Hawk 1 and 2. The colors also looked more vibrant in those ports, showing laziness on Runecraft’s part. And the characters should’ve looked shadowed and dark in the nighttime levels, and at times they just look pasted onto the other levels. They developed the original, and it looks like this should’ve belonged on the N64. Nevertheless, the game features unique levels and good detail in the bikers.

The game features music from bands such as Pennywise (They kick ass!), Bad Brains, Apocalypse Hoboken, The B-52s, and Agent Orange. They remain the only good bands in the game, as the rest is filled from nonsensical music bands such as Jurassic 5, Fluke, Ten Foot Pole, Outkast, and other worthless bands that put songs in the game that really don’t fit in well. And I noticed that Pennywise’s song in the game, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, was also in Sega’s arcade game Top Skater. The sound effects are a little exaggerated in the game, as I doubt that a bike grinding on a girder sounds like a pounding jackhammer.

The game is a must for fans of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series and fans of the Extreme, or should I say Xtreme (I’m getting so tired of seeing games with Xtreme in the title) sports games. All other should probably rent before buying.

My Score-7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/03/01, Updated 05/20/02