Pumped BMX

When I was a kid we would take our bikes down to the places in our neighborhood where new houses were being built. If it was early enough on in the process, when building crews were just clearing the land, you'd be able to find a good dirt pile or two that enough kids had ridden over to make it suitable for a bike jump. Double awesome if the plot was at the end of a road that was at the bottom of a hill. Then you could do some sweet jumps.

Most of the time, anything resembling a "trick" would be just clapping our hands in mid-air or putting our feet out to the sides. Some of the crazier neighborhood kids would jump off their bike entirely, rolling with the impact when they hit the ground like only kids can do and not break a bone in the process. The bikes fared less well.

There's a feeling like that tucked somewhere into Pumped BMX, a side-scrolling, track-based "extreme sports" game on the level somewhere between OlliOlli and Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX. It's a game that doesn't do everything right but enough to hit a sweet spot for perfectionists and casuals alike.  

I was surprised to learn that this was a mobile game before it came to Steam. As a port, you couldn't ask for much more in the way of a control scheme that adapts well to a controller. It has keyboard support too but don't bother, a game like this has no business being played with a keyboard. I couldn't imagine trying to play this game on a phone.

The tutorial isn't comprehensive but it's enough to get you going. Hold a button to go, release the button at the top of a jump to get as much air as possible, hold the button again in the air to add speed to your next approach. Use the left stick to control angle, flips and manuals. Bumpers and triggers are used for tricks along with the right stick.

A couple more abilities called Boost and Racer, which effect how high and far you go, respectively, are added later in the game and encourage you to go back and try previous tracks to complete challenges. You'll need to complete these challenges in order to unlock areas 4 & 5, although it feels like it takes just a little too long to grind these out.

It's possible that the slog seems somewhat exaggerated due to the lack of unique, standout levels. Between the forgettable season-centric backgrounds and the generic track pieces, it's puzzling how this game ended up launching without a level creator. User-generated content would have gone a long way with this game.

Luckily the repetitiveness is tolerable due to polished gameplay, chuckle-worthy ragdoll physics and deliberate, decent pacing. Sure the game does throw a few levels at you that demand hairpin accuracy a little too early on, but if you can tolerate getting through the level without doing too many tricks, you can still move on and come back later (which you will absolutely need to do to unlock the later areas).

The game meets that happy medium between frustration and frequency that encourages players to go for "just one more run". Fifteen minutes quickly turns into an hour when you're knocking out challenges and (later) the achievements. One of the things that oddly sat ill with me was the fact that I didn't actually get any achievements during the course of playing most of the game through. I had to go back later and figure out how to earn each one which, granted, does again extend the gameplay. I'm just used to stumbling onto achievements in most games these days I guess.

For the price (which is $10 as of the time of this writing) it's certainly worth what you'll get, as long as you know what you're getting into. This type of game is definitely for people in the "extreme sports video game" demographic. Curve Digital also frequently has its games in bundles, so you can often get it for even cheaper. It could use some more character, but it's certainly at the top of the "BMX game" niche. Recommended if you're into that kind of thing.