Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX 3 for the Game Boy Advance definitely isn't BMX XXX - this one is rated E for everyone. It follows the same 2-minute-run formula as have entirely too many games before it. It might be enjoyable, if you're not completely tired of doing this many, many times over in past games. There's nothing new here, but that might be enough for some people.

The control isn't bad, but there are no brilliant new ideas or anything, either. It might feel a little more like Tony Hawk than the console versions of the Dave Mirra games. It's a little hard to determine the angle of the bike when coming in for a landing, but this can be overcome with just a little practice. Lots of possible tricks are included, and each rider has his own special signature move.

There are full-vocal songs on this little cartridge, maybe a bit edited down, but they sound great. Unless, of course, you find songs from Green Day and Saliva to be grating and obnoxious, like some of us do. To each their own.

On a couple of occasions, fairly often, actually, there's been an error where the game makes a horrible buzzing sound until reset. Strange.

The gameplay is instantly familiar to anyone who's played most any extreme sports game. Maybe a little too familiar - in this game, you must seek out letters that spell M-I-R-R-A, find five arbitrary objects, get a pro score, and perform a certain stunt at a certain place within two minute runs - and then you can upgrade the rider's stats. Sound familiar? This was exactly what we were doing when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out about three hundred years ago. If you're sick of doing this, you can probably skip this game; it's the most boring thing ever. If you've been missing out on Tony Hawk and Dave Mirra games, then this game could probably be very fun or even totally amazing.

Speaking of amazing, the graphics look great - polygonal skaters and all that. The game is smooth and fast. Maybe it would have been nice to have a viewpoint from further away, and maybe depth perception is a little weird, but there's nothing to moan about. The levels are fairly normal looking, but trigger childhood memories of Marble Madness, strangely enough.

There's a mode where a custom rider can be edited, but there's really not much to be done with such a simple polygon character. Better than not including it, though, right?

For two-player link mode, there are three simple modes - Highest Score, Trick Attack (biggest single combo score), and Combo Attack (largest combo). No H-O-R-S-E mode? Bummer.

Dave Mirra 3 is fun if you're not sick of doing this over and over and over in the previous games. It's a great presentation, but individual mileage may vary.