Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX

For many adults, BMX bikes evoke memories of youthful bravado, as increasingly dangerous stunts were performed without the benefit of proper safety procedures, inevitably resulting in injury, both to pride and limbs. However, for a select number of devotees, primarily Americans (who don't actually leave school until the age of 35), performing paralysis-defying stunts was perfected into a competitive sport. Enter ten-time world champion Dave Mirra, who Acclaim hopes will do for BMX games what Tony Hawk did for skateboarding ones.

On the evidence here, he won't. A lazy conversion of an average PlayStation game is not what you maintain a hideously expensive and perennially problematic PC for. Cheap-looking menu screens give the game away, and while the actual biker graphics are passable, the environment is regularly sullied by huge tears in the scenery. If you can ignore that, there's a vaguely playable game to be had, and it is essentially Tony Hawk's on two wheels, with a variety of improbable stunts opening up further areas and bikes. Most of the challenges are simple enough, and falling off the bike actually takes something of a concerted effort.

It's mildly damning to say that the best part of the game is the music, which comes from the Beavis-pleasing likes of Cypress Hill, Rancid, and Social Distortion. As a further deterrent, the game is from the same developer as Three Lions, England's embarrassing Official World Cup game of a few years ago. Dave Mirra is a vast improvement on that, but why would you pay good money for something that you're only going to play for an hour?