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Dom Robinson reviews
featuring Ricky Carmichael for Sony Playstation 2
THQ
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
The PS2 has already seen one rough-road racing game in ATV Offroad, so MX 2002 has a fair bit to live up to in terms of playability.
Alas, it plays rather like Take 2‘s Motocross Mania on the PC and has a few less options – run round on bikes of 125cc and 250cc or go freestyle (stunt courses to gain points in competitions), ride an exhibition race, or start a career (the latter two provide a selection of indoor and outdoor courses).
Annoyingly – and unlike ATV Offroad – you can’t go a-roaming as it simply won’t let you go off on a rekkie.
This game has the official backing of Ricky Carmichael and you can ride as him or one of several other bikers, none of whom I’ve heard of before.
Compared to Motocross Mania this also employs real-world physics, but here you have a chance to catch up with your opponents instead of seeing them zoom off ahead.
Similarly though, it’s also a piece of cake to keep falling off your bike, while the nearly-came-a-cropper times find you in a position of almost falling off and then you’ll see anything BUT the correct physics and there’s no way you’d right yourself after that move.
It’s quite funny when you do get tossed off (your bike!) as your character gets thrown around like a rag doll, but even that’s not half as realistic as in ATV Offroad.
The graphics are fast, but don’t seem quite as comfortable as in ATV Offroad in terms of getting round the track, going from fast and smooth to seeing some jerkiness and that stuck feeling when you hit something on the side and stop dead trying to get past it which is completely unnatural.
The bikes roar along as they should and there’s a few decent tunes in the background including “Fat Lip” by Sum 41 which gets regular airplay on MTV2 (Sky channel 446) as I type, in September 2001, the video itself being twinned with the excellent, but brief, “Pain for Pleasure”.
Like ATV Offroad though, this one’s a rental, not a purchase as it won’t give you any more than an afternoon’s entertainment.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ORIGINALITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.