The track editor is probably the best feature of this mess. |
I'd like to complain about the game's physics, but like everything else, they exist just as a placeholder. You go up in the air, you fall down. You accelerate, you move forward. The problem is, it doesn't feel terribly real. You can be in a pack of riders, bumping and slapping into one another, and nobody will ever fall over. I purposefully put my front tire across the backside of several driver's heads, only to see them go riding off as if I'd never been there. Pull a stunt like that in Excitebike and you'll leave the other rider in the dust. Speaking of stunts, they're present in this game, but (like so much else here) totally pointless.
The music is by The Offspring, a so-so band that gets a lot of airplay here in California. They've never done much for me, but your mileage may vary. I was able to disable their warbling in the options screen, which made things somewhat better. But then I heard the sound effects more clearly than before, and I suddenly missed the musical hack job. You see, the sound is one category that can cause me to feel some emotion towards this grayish blob of nothing called JMS2K. I truly hate the sound effects in this game. Fortunately the options screen allows you to drown out the various noises JMS2K hurls at you. First to go was the engine sound effect. I've heard my three-year old make more realistic sounds while playing with his Hot Wheels. Of course, once this droning irritant is gone, you get to hear the uninspired THUD of your bike hitting the ground after a jump. It's the same THUD after every jump, on every surface, in every race. THUD. THUD. THUD. YAWN. There are no special sounds for skidding through sand or hard packed dirt. Nothing special for hitting a big mud puddle on a rainy day. You know, the rainy days where the lightning makes a generic loud sound that sounds exactly, but not quite, like anything at all but lightning.
Once the sound effects were gone, I suddenly realized there was an announcer. Unfortunately, somebody made the bone headed decision of making the announcer "realistic." He sounds like an announcer at a motocross race, not like an announcer in a video game. Thus, he sound like one would in the real world, aimed at the spectators and not at the racers. It seems that you can never hear the guy since his virtual speakers were designed to sound as if they were emanating from the grandstands rather than your television speakers. Note to Ack! Lame!: when I'm the one racing, I'd like to be the one that can hear the announcer. While I'm sure the 2D sprite people of planet McGrath are thrilled by the half-assed play-by-play, I'd be even more thrilled if I could hear it too.
Insipid racing for everyone. |
The races themselves are predictable as a episode of Gilligan's Island. Whatever place you're in by the end of the second lap is the place you'll have when you finish, so long as you don't screw up and take a wrong turn. There is no getting ahead in this game. Even the AI doesn't seem capable of passing. You take whatever spot you carve out for yourself in those first two laps and that's it. Racing on Beginner difficulty this seems to mean that you'll win every single race no matter how inexperienced you are. In Amateur mode it means you'll be firmly in 4th place and in Pro you'll be living in 7th. This structure is so predictable that when you race in the different series, you'll notice the same racers coming in at the same positions time and time again. Eventually the series becomes a test to see if you can keep playing rather than one of your skill.
You can make your own racer, but there's no point to it. No matter which rider you pick for a race, you can tune their bike's stats to whatever makes you comfortable. Not only does this make it silly to have eight real riders available to select, it also makes creating a new rider downright pointless. I made one anyways, and because I had just been watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show earlier in the evening, I named him Janet. I thought this was especially funny since I wasn't allowed to pick a female model. Maybe there are no women racing in Supercross, I wouldn't know and my brother-in-law wasn't available for comment.
Last but not least, the framerate has the amazing ability to dip to well below 20 frames per second for no discernable reason. Low poly models, sub par textures and a shoddy physics engine don't usually add up to framerate hell, but this time Acclaim has gone above and beyond to bring you the extra slideshow feature. It gets even worse in two player mode, but if you've got somebody to play this game with, do something more constructive with your time like checking each others' scalps for fleas and ticks. Even if you live in the northern reaches of Hell itself, it has to be a nice enough day outside that you and your friend could be doing something better than playing JMS2K.
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