There is quite a bit of competition in the extreme sports genre these days. The outstanding success of the Tony Hawk franchise has spawned countless imitations; some good and some not so good. I’d have to place Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX 2 (Hoffman 2 from here on) somewhere in the middle of this. The game is far from bad, but with so many games of this type on the market and a clear pack leader, I can’t get that excited about Mat Hoffman since it’s not on top of its game. I confess that I am not very knowledgeable about the real-life extreme sports that these games are based on, so my reviews are mostly limited to the gameplay without consideration for how well a game may mimic the real-life activity on which it is based.

The gameplay in Hoffman 2 is not all that different from every other extreme sports title I’ve played. However, it seems to lack in a few notable areas such as control precision and framerate when compared to the latest in the Dave Mirra franchise. As usual, the gameplay consists of riding around performing various tasks, tricks, jumps and grinds. The road trip structure of the single player mode is a slight twist on the usual level formula. It gives you the opportunity to choose from a pool of levels rather than forcing you to play them in order (or almost in order). The objectives in each level are presented in groups of increasing difficulty rather than all at once. However, the objective difficulty seems a bit out of balance and it causes you to get hung up on some objective levels repeatedly attempting one difficult objective out of four in order to move on. The other single modes are nothing new. You can session or free ride in any unlocked level for points or fun. On the multiplayer side of things, I have to give the edge to Hoffman 2 over Mirra 2 since all of Mirra’s multiplayer games were turn based (no split-screen simultaneous games). Hoffman 2 features a few old games (trick attack, graffiti war, horse and free ride) and a few I haven’t seen before such as “halfpipe hell” where you ride to the top of a mountain of vert ramps doing tricks along the way to get the highest score and the innovative “push” where the the better player’s half of the screen grows until it squeezes the other players portion of the screen out of existence.

The controls in Hoffman 2 are fairly effective if you use the analog stick. Like Dave Mirra 2 (and unlike the first three Tony Hawk games) it features analog response. However, in defense of Tony Hawk, that game’s digital control works fine. In Hoffman 2, you’ll find that the digital control responds far too much to the slightest press forcing players to choose between superior bike control or easier trick execution. I’m happy to note that manuals and nose-manuals (wheelies) are activated by pressing down-up or up-down which is what I suggested in my Mirra 2 review to correct a problem with that game. If you land your bike backwards, you’ll find that the game automatically turns you around painlessly after landing. While it does make the game easier to get into, I think the more punishing turn around in Mirra 2 provides a better gameplay mechanic. The trick system is basically no different than your standard Tony Hawk game with an expanded manual system (which is nice I might add). Still, it’s a far cry from the innovative system in Dave Mirra 2.

The graphics in Hoffman 2 are rather disappointing. Some of the levels are nice looking and some are not, but what really hurts the visual presentation are the mediocre framerate and aliasing problems. Neither the technology nor the artistic qualities of architecture are particularly notable. Though the framerate is generally consistent, it is notably less smooth than in Dave Mirra 2. The graphics scream PlayStation 2 port. On a good note, the animation seems to be on par with similar games. As with most extreme sports titles, there are a plethora of videos to unlock. Hoffman 2 features a series of nine videos for each of its stars. From what I’ve tasted of the videos thus far, they seem to focus more on following the bikers around and talking with them which should be interesting to fans of the sport. Unfortunately, the number of videos takes its toll on GameCube disk capacity resulting in highly compressed videos that don’t even fill the screen. Still, the content is there.

Hoffman 2’s sound is passable though not outstanding. The sound effects, however realistic they may be, seem to lack “attack”. The music provided is from an impressive variety of styles, including a sampling of punk, rock and rap from the late 70’s into the new millennium. You can decide best how the music fits your taste by reviewing the track list in the game's profile.

Ultimately, Hoffman 2 is not a bad game, but it’s not a very outstanding one either. At this time of year, with so many other titles (extreme sports or otherwise) to choose from, I can’t whole-heartedly recommend Hoffman 2 to anyone but BMX fans who may appreciate the movies and tricks. If you’re an extreme sports junky, this should provide an adequate fix, but it’s not the cream of the crop.