Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2

"A valiant effort, but over shadowed by archaic design and play mechanics."

The first Hoffman game was released on the PSX and eventually on the DC during a time when THPS fans were eagerly anticipating the release of THPS3, and because of this many people bought this title as something to tide them over until then. The only problem was that Hoffman played more like THPS1, with the manual feature from THPS2 haphazardly slapped on. Needless to say, in an age were Tony 2 was a game that was leaps and bounds ahead of it’s predecessor, Hoffman felt like an archaic and slapdash cash run. Sadly, it’s sequel suffers from this same fate.

Originally created by Runecraft, the Hoffman torch has now been passed over to Rainbow Studios, famous for games like ATV Off Road Fury and Splashdown, and their inexperience in the genre shows. This game is plagued with several problems, such as spotty controls and a sound track that is rather suspect.

At first glance Hoffman’s 2 graphics do impress, they are up to par with any other action sports title on the market. The level are large and detailed, and the riders look just like their real life counter parts and feature smooth riding animations, and when your Rider bails, he leaves behind a rather impressive blood trail, but this does little to hide the underlying problems.

The first Hoffman title suffered from a slight lag in control response time, and also had the propensity for what I call ''The phantom bail'', in which your rider would crash for no apparent reason, this new installment is no different. Then there is also the matter of the soundtrack. Never before has such an eclectic mix of musical styles been collected for a game. The only problem is, the sound track is a little too eclectic, with musical styles ranging from crap rock to crap rap, it never really comes to together cohesively, usually causing nothing but annoyance towards the gamer, and they do not even give you the option to take a song off the play list, like in THPS3. A new feature in Hoffman’s soundtrack that has not been seen in any other O2 titles is a continuous soundtrack. Whenever you would restart a level in any other O2 title the soundtrack would move on to the next song, not so in Hoffman 2, instead the same song will continue to play, allowing you to listen to the entire song. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is up to you. It simply boggles my mind that this, a game which could have amassed a sound track with songs from any band in world decided to put together one of the worst soundtracks of the year, yet the people who put together Razor Freestyle Scooter scraped the bottom of the barrel that is MP3.com and created a sound track that was not only more cohesive, but much easier on the ears.

There are some redeeming qualities to this game, which give me hope for the next installment. There is something resembling a story in this game. In all the other O2 titles, your character would traverse the globe with little explanation, Tony Hawk could be skating in California one second, and in France the next. You never questioned it, you just went along with it, but Hoffman 2 takes away some of the mystery by creating the atmosphere of a bike tour. Before every level, you will see a character specific documentary style video about them on an actual tour bus with all the other riders (with a total of 10 riders on the bus!). The cool thing about this is when one rider has a misadventure with another rider, you can see both sides of the story. Personally, I eat this stuff up, and is by far my favorite addition to the series.

As far as game play additions, Rainbow Studios promised they would add new flatland maneuvers which were painfully absent in the last installment, and they have delivered. The flatland tricks look smooth, and are an excellent addition to the game play. It's a shame they did not take any chances with the core game play, instead of going in new bold directions, they decided to rely on the old and blasé objectives of the old THPS games, such as collect five gas cans, or the ever exciting collect five bridge tokens. This is the kind of thing that the hard core fans of the action sports genre have grown extremely tired of, and this is an extreme detriment to this title. The whole game just has this whole ''been there done that'' vibe to it. But to their credit, they did include some cool new collecting features, such as the ability to add new songs to your play list by finding CDs hidden throughout the levels, and you can acquire new bicycles by completing tasks in the game. There is also the added concept of the road trip Scrap Book. Through the levels you will see little camera icons floating in the air, once acquired, a snap shot of your character is taken, which can be rotated and zoomed in at your leisure. The only problem with this is that the scrap book takes up over 4MB of memory card space, that’s more that half the card. I don’t know about you, but my memory card is cluttered as it is.

Matt Hoffman 2 was a game created by a developer who is getting their feet wet in an already established genre, and it shows. Hopefully next year Hoffman 3 will be game that does not feel like it is behind the times, because with the release of new and exciting titles that have furthered the genre like Aggressive Inline, Hoffman has been left behind in the dust.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/02, Updated 08/25/02