Since the GameCube's launch, I've had the opportunity to review more MX games than I care to count. Some have been excellent, while others haven't even reached the average mark. As I look over the games and their scores, the one thing that really stands out is the titles with better scores usually had something about them that was different from everything else. Unfortunately, Big Air Freestyle is largely uninspired and doesn't even come close to meeting the lofty goals set by the better MX games on the system.

The game looks decent, but isn't something that stands out. Overall, the game has a very vanilla feel to it since it seems the developers never really got in and played with the console's capabilities. Special effects are kept to a minimum and the backgrounds are a big step back for racing games. The backgrounds are very static and lacking of any sort of life and the spectators are cardboard cutouts. The water and dirt effects are interesting, but are repeated so much in the game that they tend to feel more like cheap graphical tricks. One of the bigger problems Freestyle faces is the repetitive nature of what should be the game's two key elements: the tracks and riders. Except for the slightly different background picture, every track looks exactly the same, so good luck telling one track from another. It's the same deal with the riders; they are all just palette swapped versions of one rider model. Throw in the bland, difficult to navigate menu screen (seriously, I've seen ACT tests with less text) and - well, I'm sure you know where I'm going with this.

The audio is just as bland as the visual presentation. The crowd noises are hard to hear, bike engines sound like high-powered vacuum cleaners, rider sounds are kept to a minimum and the soundtrack is lackluster. I would love to go into detail a little more - but there's really nothing else to say.

Big Air Freestyle is divided into three modes: Freestyle, Challenge, and Race. Freestyle allows you to tool around on your bike and see how many tricks you can perform and, much like the title suggests, Challenge has you completing different challenges, such as mastering a trick or placing in the top three in a race in order to unlock things in the game.

Freestyle isn't exactly a sim, but more of an arcade/sim combination. The races tend to feel realistic enough, but some of the stunts the riders pull off are a little too ridiculous. For example, how many riders have you seen that can jump in the air and flip their bike over 360 degrees only to land perfectly straight? Some of these stunts could make the ones found in Freekstyle look plausible because you at least had to time your jumps and had to straighten out your bike. I'm all for suspension of disbelief when it comes to some tricks, but give them some kind of grounding in reality. Races are handled in the same fashion as Freekstyle - only not nearly as cleanly. As your rider performs tricks, a boost meter fills up. The thing is, boosts aren't worth the effort required to fill them up because it has little effect on the race.

Except for the multiplayer experience, Big Air Freestyle isn't much of a challenge. Most of this can be attributed to the lack of competitive AI. Unlike the AI in most racing games, every racer in Freestyle seems to be on a track and will never seem to deviate from the track. Most, if not all, of your opponents can easily be beaten and offer no challenge.

If learning to ride MX bikes were only this easy. The most difficult thing to master in Big Air Freestyle is knowing when to use each of the two different brakes. One button is your standard brake, while the other allows you to powerslide. Of course, the mastery of these takes about three minutes once you realize that the powerslide is about effective as a butter knife in a lightsaber duel and stick to the normal brakes. The rest of the control scheme isn't nuclear physics either. While points should be given because of the easy to use control scheme, they aren't the most responsive things in the world, canceling out any points gained.

In all truth, there are at least 3 other MX games out for the Cube that are much better and offer a better experience. Big Air Freestlye's mix of bland presentation, lack of challenge, and poor controls should make it unappealing to even the most hardcore or hardcore MX fans.