Another motocross game from Microsoft. Very similar to the first one, just with some visual improvements.
I remember playing this back in the day. There weren’t many motocross games around, and I wasn’t particularly into motorbikes, but the options were limited, so I gave it a go.
Let’s start with the good stuff. The soundtrack is fantastic. A lot of late 90s and early-2000s racing games had great music, and this one definitely fits that trend. Another plus is the variety of bikes, there are plenty to choose from, though I’m not convinced they make much difference in gameplay. I didn’t notice any, personally. The graphics are decent for the time, but the environments feel a bit empt. Mostly wide-open fields and barren terrain.
Now for the not-so-great parts. The controls are frustratingly unresponsive. It often feels like the rider is blindfolded, and you’re shouting instructions over a radio, hoping they do the right thing. In open-field races it’s tolerable, but on smaller Supercross tracks it’s almost unplayable. If it were my game, I’d have scrapped Supercross entirely and stuck to open-field racing.
The AI is another issue. Once you fall behind, catching up is nearly impossible. Maybe it’s partly a skill issue (I’ll admit that), but I swear the AI bikes have better grip or something.
I probably crashed twenty times per race, maybe more. After a while, you just stop caring about the competition and start riding for the chaos.
It’s hard to call this a bad game, but it’s also hard to call it good. It feels unfinished, like the developers planned to polish it later but never got around to it. And honestly, that might be the best summary of Motocross Madness 2: promising, but a bit forgotten halfway through development.
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Hardware:
Compaq Garcia
Intel Pentium III 1133S Tualatin
256MB SDRAM
NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX400 32MB
Creative Sound Live!
10GB HDD (IDE)
