Xtreme Dirt Bike Review

Costas Stephanides ’s Review

Is this Project Gotham on two wheels?

It's not often that Gameloft venture into the driving genre and especially rare for the extreme sports. Why not kill two birds with one stone and bring out Xtreme Dirt Bike.

The format follows a number of similar driving games out there (Project Gotham Racing springs to mind) and is set across 7 world stages. Each stage has 4 challenges; a standard race, a time attack, either a road rage or a jump off and finally a duel against the stage boss.

With Xtreme Dirt Bike, Gameloft have tried to cover as many of the popular aspects found in current titles into a single game. You have you dirt racing, a destruction derby style level and the jump off where you get to perform a number of outrageous tricks. Even the standard racing levels have aspects of battling and tricks.

A normal race is around 3 laps of a fairly undemanding off road track against 7 other racers. In later levels, the tracks are littered with bats and pipes which you can pick up and smash your opponents with - if you don't have an item, just press 5 to give them a jolly good kick. There will usually be a few places where you can jump high into the air and perform some tricks. As long as you complete the move in time for your landing you will receive some bonus cash.

The action is fast and the gameplay smooth. If anything it's all a little too smooth and easy. The game is split across three difficulty levels but apart from slightly harder cornering, there isn't a great deal to worry about. Completing the game was not too difficult and it's not as if this body was built for dirt bikes.

There is plenty to do here and the game is good fun to play. Along with the variety in game modes there are three vehicles on offer and plenty of upgrades to buy with your winnings. Stages can only be unlocked by paying a fee (for China, just visit Gameloft's wap site through the game – no need to buy anything else if you don't want), although the vehicles and 'Z' parts are given after beating the boss.

The graphics are decent for such a fast moving game, there's no fancy 3D graphics but there are detailed backgrounds and lots of on-screen action.

Controlling the bike is simple thanks to the auto accelerate. If you want to breeze through then you are going to need to boost around most of the course by pressing 2. There is a boost bar at the top and if you push it too far then you will stack it.

After completing the arcade mode, several other modes are unlocked. There's championship racing, road rage and dedicated jump off tournaments. Each comprise three events and once again the difficulty is not too high and it’s all over a little quickly.