I didn't buy Dead Island, and I guess I never will

Sheeet, I'll just write this blog post out so that I'll have something new up here.

So, if you haven't followed my twitter updates like you should because I'm awesome, there's a few completely uninteresting things I can tell you about here and now in length.
Despite my bad habit of spending everything I have on shitty games nobody's ever liked I have actually been saving money lately so that I can buy Batman: Arkham City on the release day, BUT some weeks ago I got a little oddjob to do that paid me enough to buy one new game in addition to Arkham City, and I kept precariously teetering on the brickwall of choice between Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dead Island for quite a while. It wasn't so much that I didn't realise Deus Ex was definitely worth getting now because I have had my eyes set on it ever since I heard Spoony and Angry Joe talking about it a year back in their 2010 E3 videos, but it just seemed like Dead Island's co-op alone could be worth getting that one now and get Deus Ex: HR cheap for Christmas. I kept watching days worth of playthroughs of Dead Island and read reviews of both games like mad while trying to figure out what to buy. I even got so frustrated with not being able to make a decision that at one point I figured I'd better not buy either of them if it's this difficult. Thought I better save that money and buy something shitty, old and used instead, like Quest For Sleeping Beauty or Street Boyz. Yes, I will buy those two games someday, I'm just waiting for my loose screws to drop.

Eventually, though, I decided to buy something new for once and I came into the conclusion that although there is a chance that I could have a fantastic co-op experience in Dead Island with Gamerbomb, who I thank for offering to play it through with me, it's not a game that deserves to be paid in full for. It seem Dead Island derives all it's best qualities from other, much more successful games, and while there's nothing wrong with taking existing ideas, you still have to make the fucking game playable. Dead Island is such a lazy effort from the developers that even I get mad at it just by watching other people play it. It looks to be a game that mixes some basic ideas from bigger hits like Borderlands, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 but ends up being a repetitive, unimaginative 'smack mad people on the head and collect a few dollars from their corpses to rub on your weapons' type of experience covered in glitches, sometimes horrible game breaking bugs. The idea of taking the weapon level/rarity/upgrade system from Borderlands is just silly with the weapons being kitchen knives and sticks (that are relatively rare for a supposedly realistic world), the story seems to be just awful, the characters lack character, the environments seem dull, the whole game is about beating up zombies in such  a manner it doesn't seem fun after the first hour (which should be impossible to do because killing zombies is always fun), and the mechanic of fixing your weapons with nothing but money every 5 minutes is a lazy attempt to make the players feel like they're doing periodic maintenance of equipment and being self-sufficient and pro-active in the post-apocalypse.
Seriously, I got so mad at Dead Island just by watching other people play it that I dare not fathom what might happen if I actually spent any of my own money on it. I honestly feel that Dead Island with it's boring presentantion of what are supposed to be tried and true game mechanics, riddled with bugs that were only made worse with the patch that was supposed to fix everything, does not deserve to be bought at full price. I don't think I'll ever actually buy it myself, and I don't think I'll even mention the title to anyone in case someone from my family gets an idea to gift the game to me.
I don't care if the developer is a small-time studio that could use the support and I don't care if it's actually the publisher's fault for rushing the unfinished project out, because the one thing than matters is, "is it worth buying in my current situation". To me it seems like Dead Island is not.

So I bought Deus Ex: Human Revolution and have actually already beat it twice, and I can tell you now that it is one of the relatively rare games that really deserves to be paid good money for. It's a lot of fun with a lot of replay value regardless of whether you prefer gunplay or sneaking, although I think it's mandatory to enjoy things like reading stuff and listening to dialogue because half of the game is just straight up story. I'm not sure I would say it's a masterpiece or definitely the best game this year yet in terms of overall quality and polish, but it is such a solid and entertaining game that it feels greater than the sum of it's already decent enough parts, and I now have faith in Eidos Montreal's ability to make Thief 4 an entertaining experience. And let me just tell you here and now, it is NOT an RPG like some people call it, it only has vague RPG elements. It's a linear action adventure game with occasional hub-like city areas you can momentarily roam in with optional tasks to accomplish and a plethora of alternative methods of play to try out, with RPG-like elements on the top. I think I'll actually write a detailed and lengthy review of it some day, but I was thinking I'd try recording a walkthrough of it first so that I'll get at least three runs under my belt and have a more solid basis for my final thoughts, and that way I'd also be able to get screenshots for the review without relying on outside sources.
If you don't remember or didn't follow me way back when, I originally created this blog ONLY to serve as a throwaway general update page for my then website johnnydfox.com (courtesy of D. Stygle from PSDProtocol, thank you Darren for paying my bills for one year) that I could update easily without logging into my server host all the time just to update one file with two short sentences, but after being left with only this blog I have decided over the past year to aim at only posting three types of updates: full reviews of games and films, long-ish rants of individual aspects of games and films that alone would serve as good discussion points if anybody cared about what I think, and lastly as well as leastly the completely useless posts that only serve to link my walkthroughs and LPs to this blog (like the previous four posts), and I really wish to be able to provide whatever images I use in reviews myself and not have to pilfer them from MobyGames everytime. So basically, only deep thoughts or nothing with only self-took screenshots or nothing. Of course I haven't come even close to reaching this goal, like, ever, but a man can dream. Unless he's mentally unable to do so, which I think you'd have to discuss with a doctor of some kind instead if you have such problems.

Personal life updates like what the colour of the hair of the girl that gave me an embarrassing boner in the bus was or how my digestion is, like am I still crapping green nuggets or is there blood in there, I would hope to keep between me and my twitter followers.
So, in 2027 there will be nothing but insightful articles on this blog and nothing but shit in the twitter. Stay tuned till then, my deranged pals from another uncle.
This has once again been a 3 in the morning update for no reason other than me being bored while waiting for videos to upload, from your smoking hot neighbourhood adonis who shouldn't ever open his mouth in public.

Be seeing you.

---

EDIT:

Regarding the suspected time of availability of the Deus Ex: HR walkthrough, it's probably going to take a while. I really like sticking to recording one game at a time and I really want to do the Thief games back to back which takes a couple more weeks to finish. I also want to try and do Batman: Arkham Asylum in anticipation of Arkham City's release. By the time Arkham Asylum is up, if it stays up and doesn't get taken down by 12-year-old kids who found out YouTube's greatest weakness, that being that the service is unreliable and often easily manipulatable crap, I'll already be playing Arkham City, unless it's release date gets pushed like it probably will. I'd say you can expect Deus Ex halfway through November, at the earliest.

If you actually read all the way through this post without skipping a single line when there aren't even any images to look at, get your head examined. I think it may be cracked. Why are you even reading my blog in the first place?

Thief II: The Metal Age
PC

Slip through the shadows. Steal to survive. On the streets and rooftops of a darkened city, where the forces of a corrupt sheriff loom, it takes someone with a soft touch and even softer step to stay ahead of the law. For a master thief like Garrett, the choices are clear: profit or perish. Thief II: The Metal Age expands on the smash-hit "first-person sneaker", Thief: The Dark Project, demanding a whole new level of stealth, strategy and skill to survive.

Recorded with Fraps

A great game. An awesome game. A regular masterpiece. Took all the great things that the original Thief gave birth to and made them better. The definitive sneaking game.

Thief: The Dark Project

PC

Sneak... Stalk... Steal... Survive! Sneak through the shadows of 12 treacherous missions including haunted cathedrals, subterranean ruins, and forbidding prisons, in a dark and sinister city. Stalk your prey on the quest for stolen goods with your blackjack, sword and an assortment of unique arrows. Steal for money and uncover the hidden agendas of your allies and enemies as you play through an unravelling story of deception and revenge. Survive in a world where shadows are your only ally, trust is not an option, and confrontation results in death!


Recorded with Fraps

Classic game. Recording this walkthrough made me appreciate and love Thief: The Dark Project even more than before, but it's still inferior to the second one, the Metal Age.

Hitman: Blood Money
PlayStation 2

Hitman's back, drawing you closer than ever into his deadly world where staying anonymous, being smart and totally ruthless are the key to a perfect execution. Lucrative contracts on the rich and powerful in high profile locations make killing for money good business. But when a rival agency enters the scene it's war and only the best man will be left standing.


Recorded with Pinnacle Dazzle Video Creator Platinum

I looove this game. Love it so much I bought it twice.

Hitman: Contracts
PC

When you kill for money, there are no rules.
Hitman: Contracts takes you deep into the mind of Agent 47. Enter a world of crime, sin and greed. Encounter his greatest adversaries, completing the work that made him so ruthlessly efficient and deadly precise, the ones that shaped him as an assassin. Understand, nothing counts except the target. Anyone can kill, but can they make the perfect hit? Take on the role of 47 and do what you must to get the job done, because in a professional Hitman's hands everything becomes a weapon.

Recorded with Fraps

I love this game. I didn't like Hitman 2: Silent Assassin at all and expected Contracts to be crap as well, but I was positively surprised at how the developers managed to take all the gameplay elements that Silent Assassin introduced to the series and make them actually work.
Read about my first ever playthrough of Hitman: Contracts HERE!

Johnny Fox's Top Ten "Most Wanted" Games

Simple top ten lists made by all kinds of people about all types of things can be often seen all over the Internet, because making them is as easy as counting to ten and a lot of people over the age of six can do that. That's why I'll be doing one here and now, as I'm chronically lazy yet I still wish to keep updating my blog somewhat actively.
Still, there are some positive sides to a top ten list as well. When done with thought it can be ten little capsules of information in one big spoonful that helps explain something about a larger context, like a person's fascinations. Why not try and clarify my eccentric taste some with top ten lists, as I am the guy this blog is about and I do like talking about myself. And at least I'm not a preteen doing a 30 second video for YouTube about "the best horror films of all time" where the top spots are held by the Hostel, SAW and Scream films. Seriously kids, you suck! Stop sucking!

This particular list is about my "most wanted" videos games. It's perhaps even more pointless than simple "favourite" lists but may need a little bit more explaining. See, I'm not talking about games I'm looking forward to or hope are going to be made or games I can't afford to buy right now, I mean games that have been already released long ago that I just have serious trouble finding here and now. Games that I would most likely choose over a better game at a store even if the price was a little bit more than what I tend to pay for used games. Games that I may know nothing about, but desperately seek out so I can place them on my shelf and finish a "quest". It's one of the great joys of video gaming, searching for games to buy. It's why you call yourself a "collector" and not just a gamer.
I got the idea for this list when I realized that just recently two spots from this list were vacated when I bought some games I have been looking for for ages: BMX XXX and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. So, the point of this list is that I have some strange obsession over certain titles I sometimes know very little about, and I really can't say if many of these games are actually any good.

1. Urban Chaos, for the PC.
I think I found out about this game when it was a recommendation next to some shitty beat 'em game I was looking up on GameSpot, and it has been sitting at the top of my list ever since. I hear it's a beat'em up action adventure game with varying indepth sidemissions. And no, it has nothing to do with Urban Chaos: Riot Response, that one that's SWAT 4's inbred cousin.
I want the PC version specifically because I hear the console versions of this game suck tremendously.

2. Death to Spies: Moment of Truth, for the PC
I first heard about Death to Spies the same day I bought it. It's a Hitman-esque stealth-infiltration game where you play as a SMERSH operative in the second World War wearing disguises, strangling people in silence and spending hours upon hours replaying one single fucking mission because there's just too many regular sentries everywhere that prevent you from apprehending those damn snipers undetected. Well, Moment of Truth is the sequel to Death to Spies, and seeing how much I enjoyed the first one despite never finishing the stupid 8th level with even a hint of professionalism, and seeing how Hitman is one of my favourite series of games ever even if Death to Spies can't even compare to it, I really want this game. Want it bad.

3. Maximo vs Army of Zin, for the PS2
I had and still have the demo of Maximo vs Army of Zin on one of those PS2 demo discs that you most often got with larger gaming magazines and which I actually uploaded videos of on YouTube that one time years back, and the demo is what got me excited. Too bad I never found the damn game anywhere despite looking for it around when it was released.
All I know about Maximo vs Army of Zin is that it's a cartoony medieval action-adventure game starring the main character from Ghosts 'n Goblins, heart boxers and all, and that the demo rocks. I also know that there exists another, earlier 3rd-person Maximo game called "From Ghosts to Glory", and I suppose I want it as well even though it's title hasn't been burned into my brain that bad yet.

4. Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive, for the PC
I got the demo disc for Desperados:WDoA from a Kellogg's cornflakes package a long time ago, and after I finally got a PC that met the system requirements a few years later I got hooked. I borrowed the full game from a friend once and even started recording a video walkthrough, but sadly Giovanni Vindigni, the guy who did the music for the game claimed copryight infringement and almost took my damn YouTube channel down. No, seriously, I know the differences between a regular notice, a video take-down notice and a "Your account is just about fucked" notice, believe you me.
Inspite of the game being really crappy, simple Commandos-type of isometric point-and-click strategy game taking place in the old west with laughable but supposedly serious voice acting, without any of the great features that I know at least make Commandos 2 so great, I still like it a lot and really want it sitting right smacking next to the even shittier sequel, Desperados 2: Cooper's Revenge that I bought in a fit of madness. Don't know much about the 3rd game in the series called Helldorado, other than that it allows you to cause an accident by sending a wagon into a watertower at some point, and I have little interest in it.

5. Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death, for the PC or PS2
I was a pretty big fan of Judge Dredd comics back when I was a kid. I accidentally stumbled across the  adult comics section of our local library one day and after finding that the stuff with sex and violence was better than most of the cookie mysteries found in the kids' section I started visiting the library regularly for the Judge Dredd comics, and occasionally a few other comics I was WAY too young to borrow but did anyway. I've even thought about buying Judge Dredd comics to fill my own shelves with several times but damn they're expensive, even in second-hand bookstores. I also liked the Judge Dredd movie when I was a kid and I still have it on VHS, but not even my childlike mind back then could believe it to be true to the source material. I just liked it as a funny Stallone film.
The reason I'm not talking about the game yet is that I know very little about it other than what the demo showed me, which was Judge Dredd shooting and arresting a few street thugs with incredibly iffy controls. But I want Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death for PC or PS2 regardless. I have actually once heard a guy say that the game is awesome, but that was the one and only person I've ever heard of that actually played this game, so the credibility of that statement is suspect.

6. Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, for the PC
It's a 3rd person action adventure comedy game about a guy who died in the nineteenthirties and rises up as a zombie in I what I recall is sort of a futuristic fifties, and during his quest to cause massive chaos in the new modern city built over his resting place and turning the people there into zombies as a revenge for his death he also finds his old love and a long lost son.
I've seen the game played through twice, and I want it. For the PC, since I don't have an Xbox.

7. Jaws Unleashed, for the PS2
It's... uh... a game about a big killer shark terrorizing an island resort that was shaping up to be such a poor product that the creators decided to get the Jaws license to save what little there was to be milked out of the project. And I happen to be missing a game where you play as a killer shark from my shelf.

8. Messiah, for the PC
Messiah tells the at least partly comedic tale of a little cherub sent to the futuristic cyberpunk Earth by God to clean up sin and corruption, and it was developed by Shiny. Why wouldn't I want this game?
I still remember the first time I heard about Messiah. There was this television channel called MoonTV back then that had a lot of music and video game related shows, and sometimes they even showed things as simple as 15 minutes of unedited gameplay without adding any sort of commentary, and that's where I saw Messiah being played. And that's when I decided I'd want the game.

9. MDK, for the PC
Another comedic 3rd-person shooter Shiny title I think I saw being reviewed on MoonTV when I was a kid. You know it, I want it.








10. Dungeon Keeper 2, for the PC
Got a German ISO file of Dungeon Keeper 2 once just out of interest, and got hooked. I didn't understand a single word, it was prone to crash and the file was missing some textures apparently, but I liked the gameplay so much I still tried to play it. I did try the first game out as well, but it's not the one I fell in love with.
Sadly, though, DK2 is also the one game I have little chance to play again, for with a copy of Dungeon Keeper 2 I would also need a PC with a version of Windows that could play it. Oh, and I really want an actual existing physical copy, not a GOG download. Downloading isn't collecting.



Aaand that's about it. It's why this list sucks, I can't say much about many of these games for certain and so I can't say much at all. But hey, at least I have a new update on the blog. It's not like it matters what it is, nobody reads my posts anyway.
There are several other games I really want to get as well or I'm at least interested to learn more about, but these are what after some serious thinking seem to be my absolute most wanted.

Cover images from MobyGames.com

BMX XXX

I just recently went out to buy games again and came back home with 8 new titles with an average price of 3,45€ per game, and one of these games I picked up was the infamous sleaze-fest BMX XXX that threatened the public safety with nipples and sexual references in the early naughts. Those of you who are younger than me and missed the brief debacle this game caused back in the day, let me take the time to tell you what it's history was and how the game was received in around 2002-2003 when the game came out, or what little I know and remember at least. Don't ever fully believe anything I make out to be factual.
BMX XXX was the third bmx game from the developer Z-Axis and publisher Acclaim (Dave Mirra BMX "3" was released some days later), and was to be another Dave Mirra endorsed title. However, during some point in the game's development the developers decided, for some unconfirmed reason, to turn the previously innocent little trick-biking game into a heavily adult-oriented celebration of profanity with unlockable real-life striptease videos, teats and all, as a means of reward for completing certain challenges. As you might have guessed, the game was not a welcome addition to store shelves once it became public what a Satan's perversion of all that is good it really is. Dave Mirra himself, whoever the hell he is, demanded to get his name off the project once he heard about the game's new content and tone and then sued Acclaim when according to Dave they continued to use his likeness and name to promote the game anyway. Sony demanded the game to be censored in North America before they would let it be released on PlayStation 2, while oddly the Gamecube and Xbox versions stayed as they were, or that is what I have been told. Despite the censorship that ensued certain US retailers, the nation's foremost morality-police that would never deal in anything that a person could use to harm themselves or others physically or mentally, still refused to stock BMX XXX.

Real* live breasts, with nipples on top.
Yeah, not taking any chances with the blog.

* Real as in fake ones that physically exist

I never were into knowing anything more about video games than what the random titles on my shelf were until 2005 when I created my GameSpot account, and back when BMX XXX came out I had only just bought a PlayStation One, didn't have Internet and were not a subscriber of any gaming magazine, but the outcry caused by the game's immoral offerings was so loud that the sound of it managed to reach my eardrums. I still remember one Saturday morning when I caught a review for the game on a Finnish video game show, and got more and more excited the more the reviewer bashed the game. As a male going through puberty around that time and already developing an uncanny taste for video games I of course wanted to someday own this sexually charged shitty titty game no young one should ever lay eyes upon, and the title was forever archived somewhere in the dark fungal growth of the back of my brain. Years it sat on my own personal "most wanted games" list and now, here in 2011, the start of the the decade that I predict sees a much needed change in the non-gaming mass' opinion on video games and how they should be rated, I actually own it. I have personally experienced what some silly people have called the worst game ever, or at least most atrocious and depraved title to be released on consoles, and I can truthfully answer the main two questions that many people may have asked regarding BMX XXX: Is the game really that horrible? Is the nudity really so over the top it should've been banned? No, and not really, not in my opinion.
It may very well be that I'm just an adult now and have a healthier outlook on life than the many smallminds back in the day and have learned to finally rate video games using more than two grades. Or maybe I have just played too many horrible games and can't tell what is good and what is bad anymore, and maybe I have been desensitized to sex and violence by games like Conker's Bad Fur Day, Postal 2, Barbie Horse Adventures 2 and Sexy Beach 3. I don't know. All I know is that in my opinion the fuss regarding BMX XXX and it's content was an overreaction, as usual, and people who say the game is the worst ever have probably never played more than five games. The game isn't good by any means, but there's no reason to exaggerate, games shouldn't be rated in the extremes. Except whenever I see it fit to do so.
Oh, right, you're thinking that I can't talk about the nudity because I have the PS2 version, but that's where you'd be wrong: the rumours were all true, the PAL area version is in fact uncensored. It's probably due to the French, their casual use of nudity in films has liberated our continent from sexual repression.
But anyhow, I suppose I should get to describing the actual game sometime soon.

BMX XXX takes a dump on the player.
Yes, it's only pigeon poo,
the game's not THAT depraved.

BMX XXX has two modes of play: the Hardcore Tour and the multiplayer. The multiplayer offers three different modes playable on five different levels taken from the Hardcore Tour. The modes are called Skillz, Paintball and Strip Challenge.
Skillz is your usual who-gets-the-most-points-in-two-minutes mode, and I see no reason to explain it further. Paintball is a little bit more interesting in that in it one player has 90 seconds to collect as many boomboxes scattered around the level as he possibly can while the second player uses various different types of "paintball" guns to try and ki--... erm, non-lethally drop the other one, and after either the active rider has lost all his health or the time is up the players switch roles. There's a good assortment of different types of guns like the pistol, sniper rifle, machine gun, rocket launcher and grenade, and while the game calls them painball guns, I would seriously contest that. There's no paintball in sight, the sounds are straight from a (cheap) shooter game, and although the game lacks blood when the player falls down I wouldn't have been surprised to see some. Considering that the game's biggest problem is the lack of effort, seeing a neat and usual idea like this for a multiplayer mode is surprising. In the less inventive Strip Challenge mode both players try to get high combos with a clothing article removed from the opposing player's rider everytime a new record for highest combo is set. It's a rather dull and short mode, because a couple of combos are ridiculously easy to do and the round ends after one player has set the record four times.

BMX XXX:
Literal pile of shit

The Hardcore Tour, the game's singleplayer mode is divided into 9 levels, or at least that's what the back cover says even though I count eight levels. Two of these levels are so-called competition levels where in order to continue you must get to the top three list by doing certain amounts of all types of tricks and getting a high score within a two minute time limit, twice. The rest of the levels are called challenge levels where you have 20 different challenges spread across the playing area that you can do rather freely, with ten challenges needed in order to unlock the next level. I actually personally find it a little annoying that competition levels exist and are placed between challenge levels, as competition levels are more boring. The playing areas seem like excerpts from the challenge levels with a duller backdrop and a couple more halfpipes, and the fact that you can only play in these levels with the two minute time limit takes away any fun of freedom. I also found it  little bit confusing on what I was meant to do in order to get higher score from the judges, as in order to get better scores you need to pull off all types of tricks several times each as well as get a large amount of points. Just getting the points and doing one or two of each type of trick isn't enough.

Pointless violence can be funny...

... but you need lots more for it to work

The problem I have with the challenge levels, however, comes from the serious lack of payoff for what you're doing. I have to say that for the most part the only thing that kept me going was the prospect of seeing what stupid shit the game will throw at me next in the form of not-so-funny jokes and cutscenes depicting wanton mayhem, but sadly, out of 20 challenges a level only a few of them actually have any "point" or variety to them. Several of the challenges are the exact same ones in all of the levels; collect 45 tokens, find all gaps, deliver 5 people to a certain place, get a high score, get an even higher score, get the highest score, get a high combo. Then there tends to be a couple more challenges where all you need to do is complete a certain gap or two (which you'd finish while going for all gaps anyway) or do a "long" grind, wallride or a manual, sometimes in a specific place. Then there's the four or maybe a whopping five challenges where the task is given to you by a "comedic character" and completing it rewards you with the level getting opened up a bit in a challenge ending cutscene.  The game really suffers from this, because not only are there so few "humorous" challenges that could keep your interest in playing, as you might have already guessed the content of the cutscenes is also not the most entertaining. I like to think I have a well developed sense of humour and I can appreciate the kind of crazy, sleazy, immature, even dark type of comedy where people cause large accidents with puke, tits are the focus on many occasions, cardboard planes can fly and a guy is decapitated for no particular reason, but BMX XXX's humour falls short of the point where I'd find it amusing so often that I honestly couldn't crack a smile at any point in the game. A larger quantity of these bad jokes would've actually helped to press on, as seeing so bad it's almost funny humour is better than nothing during a several hour playthrough. Must admit that it's not the worst stuff I've seen, though. Considering how bad a bad comedy game can possibly get, BMX XXX actually has surprisingly decent ideas for jokes and a lot of the humour could be saved with some very simple fixes to how the jokes are presented. Living in a world where a frighteningly large amount of people actually find things like Disaster Movie or Epic Movie funny, I have no reason to believe that the in comparison superior brand of comedy of BMX XXX couldn't have it's fanbase as well. That's IF those potential fans were old enough to play this Mature-rated game. That's another mistake the ratings boards made, because this game is more immature than anything. If it wasn't for some bad language, a decapitation scene and eight nipples (six real ones) I would give the game a rating of T personally.

Even redneck Johnny and his mullet can do tricks in BMX XXX

I mentioned earlier how to me the only thing worth playing for were the brief custcenes, and one could say that's where my problem lies as alternative sports games like this are meant to be played for the fun of riding around doing tricks, not story. While I admit that I'm personally not big on just messing about and going for the points in games most of the time, BMX XXX shares at least some of the blame. The game isn't really challenging in the least and although the mechanics behind the performing of tricks are very good and the control scheme works, the ease at which you do everything just helps to devalue the act of pulling of the big stunts. My only problem throughout the game was that my game didn't come with the manual, maybe it had raunchy enough imagery to be good spank material for the previous owner or something, and so it took me a while to figure the individual tricks and which buttons activate them, and still, once I realised what the modifier button was for I started doing 540 Nothings out the ass during huge transfers. Even if you messed up a trick and are about to land sideways, the game is so lenient as to let you latch on to nearest grindable object with the press of a button everytime, even if you're not even close to it. It's like Sly Cooper physics and takes very little actual skill. When the most hardcore tricks can be performed by anyone with two thumbs, it doesn't take long for an averige player to wish for some point to it, and because tricks are so easy to pull of completing any challenges that require performing tricks feels redundant when they can be completed within literally seconds.

The only difficulty the game presents is for all the wrong reasons. While performing the tricks is easy, the general steering of the bike is much more iffy. The bike blasts off like a rocket from a complete stop, doesn't halt very easily, turns mostly in 50 degree increments and hitting a wall bumps the bike to a new direction without slowing down the speed. Furthermore, the biggest challenge of many of the, well, challenges is in spotting the collectable objects or even the challenge givers themselves in the level as they have oddly short draw distances sometimes, and when you mix the speed at which your bike tends to go with the need for calm movements to scan the area even the simplest objectives can become brief exercises in frustration despite the small level sizes. Then again, once you do find what you're looking for, the challenges become so easy again that you wonder why they exist.

Rarely gets more adult than
tits during the actual gameplay

The skitching in this game is pointless. There is supposedly a mechanic available that allows the player to hang on to cars and get more speed, but this is the most useless feature ever. Only time you EVER use it is for the challenge in the first level where you need to skitch a police car for a short while, and after that it becomes impossible to do on levels where some extra speed would help with certain objectives. Not that it would increase your speed any even that one time you can do it.
There also some bugs and problems with the game. Certain few ramps and halfpipes seems to be broken enough to often make you fall on your ass immediately upon riding on them, and an especially big nuisance on competition levels is a weird glitch where the rider is stuck in first-person view and will no move no matter what you do, until after about 20 seconds of mashing buttons.
Still, no game seems to be completely without their problems and despite BMX XXX's flaws the gameplay is still adequate and while casual gamers may find the fun shortlived I can assure you that a huge fan of games like these, like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Matt Hoffman's whatevers, should be able to get some kicks off of it. It's not complete shit, at least compared to it's peers. In my opinion the best gameplay in any alternative sports title is found in EA's Skate, where doing the smallest tricks feels more rewarding than any built in challenges, messing around is worth your while and exploring the town for neat spots to trick is something you do on your own. Buy your copy of Skate, today!

The audio of BMX XXX is a bit lackluster in many regards. Most of the voices seem to have been recorded some place other than a recording studio, possibly a seedy downtown alley, as the sound quality is a tad crap. I think two of the speaking characters are voiced by a real living kid and kids are always annoying, and many of the characters sound just like all other similar characters from every single crappy comedy game. The pimp sounds exactly like what you'd imagine if you've ever played a comedy game with pimp character, the hippies sounds exactly like the crappy hippie voices from any other game, the sad guntoting hick of a sheriff with only one bullet sounds like a stereotypical smalltown hick sheriff... you get the point I think. Then again, I think maybe BMX XXX preceded a lot of the games I'm thinking of, so maybe it both gets points for being original firestrater and should be destroyed for it's crime at the same time, because I hate stereotypical shitty voices in my crappy cheap games!

The sounds during the levels are unimaginative and mostly annoying. The weak sounds the bike itself makes, like the rattle of the chains and the sound of tires hitting the floor are nice, but everything else from pedestrian shouts to the simple boop-you-completed-a-challenge sound get on my tits after a little while. Seriously, the happy sound, the chime that tells you you've done something good should never annoy you and that's what it does to  me, maybe partly because it just tells me I really didn't achieve anything by completing a so-called challenge. The pedestrians often each have their own things to say, one or two of them, and they keep repeating their favourite line everytime you ride anywhere near them. The pimp shouts "I'm gonna cut you, bitch" or "What did I just say, bitch" when you go anywhere near, the hookers yell "Wanna ride me like a bike?" and a street vendor keep advertising his "hot salty nutsack" when in shouting distance. It gets preeeetty damn tiring, hearing that same crap over and over and over again. But, I must remind you right about now that no matter how stupid the hot salty nutsack joke is, one year later the popularly believed to be a superior alternative sports title endorsed by a big name sports figure, Tony Hawk's Underground did pilfer that same joke and kept on repeating it about as much as BMX XXX does in the Manhattan level, so it's not like BMX XXX is the only game to have crap jokes. A lot of games, good and bad, are guilty of many of BMX XXX's crimes.
The soundtrack is abysmal, or at least it feels like it. I count 19 songs that you can cycle through in the options menu during the game. Unfortunately I only find three or four of them good enough to listen to and it gets tiresome having to constantly pause the game to skip to De La Soul's The Magic Number or Green Day's Basket Case, and let's just get it out of my system, when one of the best artists on your soundtrack is clearly Green Day, your selection stinks regardless of the fact that Basket Case is their best song.
I know, I know, it's probably a money thing with the artists or rather the thieves that leech off of the artists, but in these kind of games music is crucial to keeping up good mood and the will to play on, and choosing a good soundtrack is important. I don't want to have to shoot myself over what I hear on the forefront while playing.

The visual gag is funny, the attempt to
drive the joke in through dialogue was not

I suppose that's about everything one really needs to know and say about BMX XXX, and my final verdict is that the game is a subpar alternative sports title, and that's the keyword. Subpar. The game's biggest problem is lack of effort and general polish that clearly stems from the developers' realisation that they were working on something that was doomed to pass unnoticed by the public and be forgotten within weeks, a game damned to the garage sale hell with all the other sports titles nobody ever wants but somebody's stupid aunt keeps buying for gifts. BMX XXX isn't even close to being one of the worst games ever, just one of the more forgettable and possibly only the worst you'll ever play. Even from my pitiful 100 game PlayStation 2 collection I can name about 14 games worse than this, and a few more that are on par solely because of a personally interesting or so-bad-it's-funny premise. The reason BMX XXX got and still keeps getting so much shit is for the controversy it got when it was released. People who wouldn't have ever bought or even heard about a third game in the Dave Mirra series ended up focusing their adolescent attention to this new, notorious titty-game for a few minutes and went with the popular opinion, only they were and still are largely commenting on other reviews or gaming forums where there is never even a vaguely grey area, only hate or love or get the fuck outta here.
Well then, was the decision to add raunchy humour and nudity a horribly wrong choice? No, of course not, the game WAS noticed and it WAS bought by people who othwerwise would've never shed a single penny on it. Even without the 30 second striptease videos and constant fuck-all humour the game couldn't have saved Acclaim from their downfall, on the contrary it probably would've been a quicker death. At least there are still insane people like me around who are proud to add BMX XXX to their awful collections because it was so well known for a little while, and the content isn't so bad I would feel like committing a crime placing it on my shelf or playing it. The step over the line the game took was only ever very minor one, even if the striptease videos are rather titillating.

Yeah, I admit that picking up the game in the store and placing it on the counter took enough guts that I probably would've passed on it if that one good looking female worker had been there to handle the transaction that day, and I admit there was that invisible presence that speaks in silence in my room yelling at me "You're playing that game for the titties! You sad, lonely pervert!" But once I played a few levels that feeling went away. This isn't a game you hide from your mother, this is a game you hide from your grandmother. And video game snobs.

Now I must go reflect on my life and ask myself why I wrote this much about a game I bought for the sake of novelty.