Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good BMX game for GBA, October 11, 2003
I bought the game for $15 after beating dave mirra 2. As a novice flatland BMXer, the fact that this game had flatland tricks and the fact that I saw that it had 9 environments, I knew I had to buy this game. In this game, flatland tricks can be executed from a front or rear manual.
Gameplay is similar to DM2 where about 10 various objectives per level are scattered throughout the level. DM2 veterans will be familiar with collecting the letters M I R R A and spraycan challenges. Other objectives include tranfering from one object to another, or grinding a specific object.
Difficulty varies from easy to extremely hard. Amature level objectives can be accomplished pretty soon. After amature levels are beaten, pro levels is unlocked. You return to some of the levels that were already unlocked and new objectives appear. After you beat pro, Hardcore levels are slowly unlocked. It was almost impossible to complete some of the harder objectives so I printed out a walkthrough which aids you throught the process.
Audio is amazing in this game. Songs by NERD, New Found glory, Greenday, and more.
There are a few weak points in this game. One thing they had in DM2 was the 2 player mode where you take turns on one GBA. They should have put single pak link or taking turns multiplayer. replay value would really increase if a game of HORSE was implemented. One last thing that pissed me off was the 2 minute time limit, it can make you very frustrated. Sometimes you are almost finished with one task but the time runs out. But then again they wouldn't be able to view the replay of the run which is pretty cool because you can slow down the motion.
If you like DM2 you would definitely like this one. It is a solid game overall, the difficulty will keep you chanlenged and play for at least a month.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
More of the same, September 10, 2003
Well, it's no surprise that Acclaim wussed out of bringing the controversial BMX XXX series to the Game Boy Advance. Younger demographic aside, I doubt that any developer could accurately portray the topless experience with a rudimentary 3D engine, though it certainly would have been amusing to see a team try to make the breasts stand out on the GBA's limited resolution screen. Or animate sprite-based dogs mating on the side of the road. Instead, Acclaim rightfully continues the Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX series on the handheld, putting the team responsible for the previous GBA Dave Mirra title released pretty much a year ago. Other than the fresh licensed sountrack, this design doesn't add a whole lot to the genre or significantly improve on what the team already did in last year's version. Even still, Dave Mirra 3 is a solid extreme sports title for the GBA. Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 3 follows the established Tony Hawk gameplay almost to a T in a two-wheeling BMX environment. Sorry for making the comparison, guys, but it's inevitable: Tony Hawk did it first and best, and Dave Mirra 3 doesn't really deviate from the formula. Players hop on their BMX bike and hit the different parks in the cartridge, performing set tasks on a checklist to acquire money that will both increase the player's attributes as well as unlock the more advanced bike parks in the game. Each task has a monetary value; some tasks are a "simple" matter of grabbing a high score through tricks, others require a bit more work in a scavenger hunt, locating and grabbing (or knocking over) items peppered all over the area. Dave Mirra 3follows the "old" standard of a two minute clock where players have to accomplish as much as they possibly can before the time runs out, ending the run. After Aggressive Inline on the console established the brilliant, mission-based "endless run" gameplay (which Tony Hawk 4 adopted months later), it's really difficult to go back to the hugely limiting timed runs in an extreme sports title. Full Fat's BMX sequel also builds upon the game engine the team established for Dave Mirra 2. The polygonal character/bitmap background engine is as fast and smooth as it ever was, and allows for much larger skateparks that seem to go on nearly forever. Character models look a little goofy on the character select screen because they lack any sort of texture work, but in action they look fine on the GBA screen. These guys have a ton of different moves that can be pulled off on the vert ramps, grind rails, and lips, and thanks to the game not having a console version to match, the development team tweaked the controls to make it easy to pull off 360s, 540s or higher simply by hitting the L button. This sequel also advances the sequel with its two player link cable modes, seemingly spawned from the team's previous Aggressive Inline GBA effort. But the engine still has some really wonky collision detection that hasn't been cleaned up since last year's version. Most notably are the situations where momentum grinds suddenly jerk into peg stalls for no rhyme or reason. To leap into a grind on an object, players have to be extremely precise in their landings, otherwise the grinds will never connect with the rails...this adds to the game's challenge, but it's more frustrating than not to try to latch onto a rail to grind, only to miss by that much simply because the collision detection's a bit on the loose side.
The development team definitely impresses in the audio department. Acclaim gave the guys free reign to include a few of the same licensed songs from BMX XXX, and the Dave Mirra 3 cartridge is packed to the brim with excellent quality recordings of these tunes. Familiar tunes from Saliva, Ten Foot Pole, New Found Glory, N.E.R.D., Sludgefeast, and Green Day compliment the extreme sports action. Granted, these songs had to be edited down from their original form to fit on the limited cartridge space, but they loop seamlessly after a 45 second sampling. The only real problem is that the designers didn't offer any sort of randomizer for the songs; each level has a default song that plays until the user changes the song in the pause menu. But when that level starts up again, the default song returns. Bad design decision here, simply because the levels are quite extensive and require several plays through before the user can move on...and by that time, that one song has really worn out its welcome. Dave Mirra 3 isn't a bad game at all. It's actually a lot of fun once you get over a few of the quirks that surface during its gameplay, like its wonky collision detection during grinds and item pick-ups. Its more limiting "single run" gameplay is probably the game's biggest disappointment, as the designers didn't move the series into the "new age" of extreme sports gameplay. But the team does, however, move the GBA audio forward; the music is downright outstanding and extremely impressive for a Game Boy Advance title, even though it's just compression and clever looping of a shortened sample music bite. Dave Mirra 3 still doesn't reach the Tony Hawk GBA production standards, but it's still an enjoyable title in its own right.
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