Graphics

Lookin' Sweet!

MCM2's graphics engine is very adept at handling large, outdoor expanses of terrain. You'll be going through valleys, hills and across stretches of plain. There are snow, grass, mud and desert environments for you to bust up. You get all this without any slowdowns even as high as 1024x768 on the review system setup.

Phbbbt

I'm so off on the landing

The rolling hills and valleys are enriched by hundreds, if not thousands of trees that litter the maps. Each of these can be as much a detriment to your biker as a brick wall that suddenly sprang up ahead. I've lost track of the times that I made a jump without knowing what's on the other side, only to kiss a tree at 80mph. Fortunately, the designers included the option to disable collision with vegetation.

I hope his mother's not watching...

Bad time to stunt, boy!

But remember as a kid how when you had to vent some anger, you took something really really nice that didn't belong to you and ripped it all up? That warm fuzzy feeling comes back once you do a little Baja racing in MCM2.

The texturing, while simple and plain, is realistic and gives the ground a natural look. The trees themselves look real enough - at least when you're moving fast - and certainly feel real enough when you crash into one. So when you're kicking up dirt all over nature's pristine back yard, you can almost let out that sadistic little kid you've had to keep pent up for most of your adolescent or adult life.

I hope you've got a can...

Survival of the Fittest doesn't mean Smartest

Motion Captured Pain

While we can't be sure if motion capture was used to do the stunts, we (almost) hope not, because the crashes you can have just look brutal. The smooth, naturally flowing animation is vicious in its realism when you mess up a stunt 45 feet in the air and fall off your bike, tumbling with arms and legs thrashing right before the ground smacks you good. Then you roll, bounce and slide until you stop - certainly something that would kill or seriously injure any real human - but, given how fun it is to crash, we don't mind.

The bikes and riders are modeled quite nicely and extensively animated. There are several 'real world' brands of bikes used - Honda, KTM and Yamaha - with several models licensed from each manufacturer.