Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2

"A great game... if it came out in 1997."

Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2... an okay game, but not good enough to grab my attention. I personally bought this game due to the tie in with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, which is an amazing game, and a better purchase than this.

Gameplay: 5/10

Okay, this gameplay is getting very stale. It's basically a downgraded version of the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater arcade-style gameplay with the 2 minute time limits. The tricks are harder to pull off due to the small thin wheel of the bike, and as far as I have played in the game there is no way to raise stats that i know of. When you bail it takes about 5 seconds to get up, which really is painful considering in tony hawk it takes about 2 seconds to recover. The time limit is no help. The gameplay is less impressive than the first THPS, and that is an amazing downgrade as this came out in between THPS3 and THPS4. Overall, not good.

Control: 4/10

These controls are basically just a port of the THPS series controls, minus all the useful things such as reverts and spine transfers. In fact, any time you trick off a ramp with a spine you automatically perform a spine transfer, whether it's at a convenient time or not. Manuals are extremely hard to pull off, even if you go into them from the air. The only plus side to the controls is how easy it is to cruise around, which is alot more fun than actually attempting to do tricks.

Sound: 7/10

I don't exactly enjoy the music selection in this game, but i do like the sound effects. Well, not a lot, but its the best part out of the audio in this game. All the sound effects sound nice and fluid, but they are usually drowned out by the music. Even though the music is crappy, there are some nice unlockables. You can unlock more tracks and select which track is playing (not even THPS4 has that). Too bad it's a crappy selection of tracks, or that might of really boosted the game. Heck, if it even sported the custom track feature that THPS3 and THPS4 had I might actually enjoyed this game.

Overall: 6/10 (not an average)

This game had alot of potential, and it threw it all away. Even with all the innovations that the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series introduced it didn't take advantage of any of them, and it didn't even use one of the Xbox's trademark capabilities, the custom track feature.

Rent or Buy: Rent. If you REALLY enjoy this game, buy it, it's only $ now anyway.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/04