First thing's first. Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 has got what is probably the biggest collection of musical artists to ever perform in a video game. In fact, there are 20 music tracks (of which some will need to be unlocked), all by completely different artists, including big names like Suicidal Tendencies, Ice-T, Digital Assassins, LL Cool J, and Iggy Pop. For what may be lacking in the same ol', same ol' of the sound fx department, the selection of music tracks more than makes up for it.

This year's version of Pro BMX once again appears to 'borrow' the 3D graphics engine from its sister game, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Is this bad? Absolutely not. After all, why get off a winning horse? On the other hand, a genre of games that has hit the end of its graphical potential may need a completely new engine to boost bits and pieces of it. On the plus side, Pro BMX 2's graphics are still a clear, sharp goodness of pleasure to look at. On the down side, there seems to be an awful lot of clipping happening between your rider and his surroundings.

Once again, the extreme sports genre has ridden the coattails of its true genre-busting original, Tony Hawk. What this means is that you essentially get the same great gameplay, only instead of weaving around on a skateboard, you get to manhandle the courses with a dirt bike. Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 offers eight Road Trip locations and just as many Multiplayer Modes.

In Road Trip Mode, you will hop on a bus and bust out as many killer tricks throughout the country as you can, along with any of the eleven pro riders in the game. In order to move on to the next city, you'll have to earn enough road trip points to get your bus moving and unlock each new area. Granted, there are extras in Pro BMX 2 like riding all of the gaps, but the game still revolves around the standard go-hit-five-locations-before-the-time-runs-out and score-a-set-number-of-points-in-one-session gameplay. Again, it's great to keep with a winning style of gameplay, but tweaking it or semi-altering it may help rejuvenate the genre.

This year's game does have its tweaks, but they are essentially the same that the Tony Hawk games have undergone. For example, the biggest, baddest, newest edition to Pro BMX 2 is the implementation of using manuals and flatland tricks. It seems that not only can you perform these types of tricks, this time around you will be required to perform them in order to clear the cities. So you best learn them soon, and learn them quickly, or face a load of frustration until you do (as was the case for me!).

It is exactly here where the underlying problem lies with Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2. The overuse of flatland tricks and manuals rules the entire game. If you want to score big, you'll have to chain together many, many combos while moving from ramp to ramp. This is especially the case in multiplayer modes that require you to score big and score often. Since these tricks aren't all that easy to perform, the skill levels of different players can vary drastically, making multiplayer very unfair in certain situations.

There's really only one thing to talk about, but I've already rehashed it to death. Well, here's some more. Chaining tricks together is the absolute key to success in Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2. Fail to learn this scoring technique, and face humiliation with your buds in a very quick game of Horse. In single-player modes, chaining tricks is just as important. Pro BMX 2 has actually got A TON of available tricks, so learning them all is very tough, but it is pretty forgiving. Just about any random button pressing will perform some type of tick. It's just a matter of learning as many as you can, but more importantly, learning the amount of time needed to perform these tricks. I've noticed one thing different between the Mat Hoffman and Tony Hawk games... the former seems much, much more difficult to land when coming off ramps, which aids in the frustration of Pro BMX 2.

With the exception of needing to be very precise in your landings, Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2's control system is very solid. As stated above, there are so many different trick combos that I'd be surprised if you could ever perform them all in one session. This makes it actually very easy to perform random tricks, but hard to remember how to perform certain tricks. It takes a lot of practice, and a lot of patience. But with both, Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 is an entertaining game for all fans of the genre. Just remember that when you sit down to play, and get a feeling of deja vu, it's probably because Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX 2 is just a tweaked out version of the original.