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.