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After receiving my copy of MX2002, I didn't play it straight away since I'm not a Moto Cross fan. Once I did get around to playing it, I was hooked. MX2002 is an incredibly fun game that has a lot more skill involved than is initially apparent. With both racing and freestyle tournaments, MX2002 is an overall Moto Cross experience.

While not perfect, MX2002 has a great balance of gameplay, graphics and artificial intelligence.

Graphics

The modelling for the player and their bike is brilliant, there are all sorts of little details in the modelling that make movement look incredibly realistic. For example, if a collision occurs between two bikes, your rider will look where the collision occurred. The freestyle moves are all brilliantly modelled and even the falls and crashes are reasonably done.

Unfortunately, some of the tracks look very comic-like, especially some of the outdoor tracks. It really defeats the immersive nature of the modelling and realism of the player and his bike. The additional models in the maps can also be very simple - the buses in the bus jump maps are pretty-much textured boxes. Despite this, the indoor tracks are all excellent, the tracks and surrounding arenas all look fantastic.

Despite some of the tracks looking cartoony, this doesn't mean they aren't fun. I haven't found a track yet I haven't enjoyed. Each one has its own idiosyncrasies that would must be aware of: sharp/blind corners, awkwardly-spaced jumps, low-barriers and other factors.

Gameplay

One brilliant idea implemented in MX2002 is the tutorial system. In the first career class, as you complete more races tutorials are unlocked allowing you to discover additional tips and tricks required for good MX racing. Since I didn't know anything about MX racing, these were definitely welcome. When you are MX racing, what will help you win is not knowing the exact point to brake and accelerate around corners (like in racing games), but how much to compress your suspension, when to powerslide and when to fan the clutch - all of which can be done in MX2002.

To "pre-load" the suspension means to force the springs to depress before a jump, enabling you to fly through the air higher and further. Sometimes, though you don't want to go further because it will land you too far or off the track, so you must learn when to compress the spring and how much. Powersliding enables you to take corners faster, but you often take a much larger turning circle which is sometimes acceptable, other times it isn't. Fanning the clutch will give you a quick boost of energy but has to be used with caution, since it will adversely affect your performance going uphill or when you're close to your top speed already.

All these little details mean that you must be very aware of the track you are on and the capabilities of your bike. These details also come into play with freestyling. Freestyling basically consists of making very large jumps (thus pre-loading your suspension) and doing an insane number of stunts, combinations, turns and flips! While you can do stunts in races, the risk of falling off and losing the race prevents you. Instead, there are specialized freestyle tournaments and maps that allow you to test your skills.

The stunts all relatively easy to execute and generally consist of simple combinations. Nevertheless, with the huge amounts of height you can get off the jumps it is possible to execute 6-7 different stunts in one jump, leading to some huge and very satisfying scores.

The only problems I had with MX2002 gameplay was the replay system. The replay system didn't provide very good replays - the camera angles were very simple and always moved with the bike. It was possible to freeze the action at any point as well as rotate the camera, but the rotation was incredibly limited. For example, you couldn't look underneath the bike or from right above it. You also couldn't switch between other bikes to watch how the computer took the tracks.

Artificial Intelligence

It seems like the AI system varies the ability of each driver slightly, meaning the some will use their suspension better than others, take corners better and generally ride quicker. All the riders are very aggressive and will often collide with you or, even worse, land on you! This can be very frustrating in races but I suppose it comes with the territory.

What is also interesting to note is that the AI sometimes takes shortcuts across maps - jumping across corners. If you jump a corner too much, your rider will automatically fall of his bike, so it is worthwhile watching the AI to see the point at which it jumps.

All these differences in how the AI riders take the track aids the immersive qualities of MX2002 and helps add to the chaos and confusion often associated with MX riding. Unfortunately, there is a maximum of 7 bikes per race - much less than most MX races. It would have been great to be in a huge MX race with 30 or so bikes all racing around the same track. This aside, the MX2002 AI is truly impressive.

Conclusion

	8.5
	Platform: PlayStation 2 Liked: Great fun, AI, excellent tracks, good multiplayer. Disliked: Too few AI opponents, graphics are mixed, replay system. .: Buy at Amazon.com :. .: Buy at Amazon.co.uk :.