Streetdog BMX Review

I prefer skateboards over bikes. I can’t ride one in real life, and I found a board with wheels a lot less complicated to learn than a complex system of gears, chains, and wheels to create one of the healthiest modes of transportation to use in the modern world (and maybe a zombie apocalypse). So why not review Streetdog BMX, an arcade action sports game developed and published by Yeah Us! Games? From a team that has made games like the Pumped BMX series and claiming to excite fans of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (or THPS) and Dave Mirra BMX, both series I have never played, this makes me the perfect person to check this out.

In this game, you play as a customisable biker.

…What? You want a story? Screw that, just go into the streets and start riding. It’s not that complicated, which I like. It’s all about being the best BMX rider around; I don’t know what else to say here.

For the graphics, it looks fine overall. Your biker is pretty cartoony and the environments are vibrant, brimming with colour and graffiti. However, I would prefer a little more grittiness to the playable areas, as it looks too clean to really sell that grungy, punk style which makes up most of the soundtrack. By the way, I would really like to see what song is playing because there are some tracks I’d rather skip. If you want another game that looks very similar, the first one to come to mind is skate. Heck, they both look nearly the exact same, which is a little freaky.

But enough about that, let’s start riding… which will be quite the learning experience. The control scheme might be a little weird, especially if you’re more used to the THPS layout. For example, to do a basic trick, you pedal with the right trigger, double-tap it to sprint (which consumes a boost metre), flick down your right stick to hop, then push the right stick again in a direction to perform a trick. That’s… a little more than what I was expecting, and it only gets more complicated from there as you need to learn how to grind, flip, and wallride your way through the game.

I’m very used to the Flick-It system from Skate and it’s just different enough to throw me off. I was bailing a ton throughout my time with the game… at least, on the default controls. You can go into the settings to tweak how you ride your bike and perform tricks, which is nice and does help with some aspects. Still, there’s a learning curve where it’s easy to get into but will be hard to master.

And what better way to practice the controls than with challenges? They’re pretty standard for the genre. Rack up a combo, perform tricks, hit high scores, collect S-T-R-E-E-T, etc. They both teach you more about the game and challenge you to get better at it. Each challenge has a bronze, silver, and gold medal to collect either in sequential order or by going above the minimum requirements. Collect enough medals and you’ll unlock the next level. There are over 270 of them to do, so you’re not going to be running out any time soon, and they’re often fun to do, even for an amateur like me. It’s also pretty helpful that the game shows you how to do the specific tricks you need to do.]

The six handcrafted levels (well, seven counting the Training Area) get increasingly more complex as you progress, but also give you more opportunities to rack up even higher scores. Even once you run out of challenges to do, you can always just ride around at your leisure. It’s not that difficult to unlock all the levels, so you’ll be spoiled for choice about where you want to hang around in. Not only that, throughout these fancy BMX parks are hidden cosmetics like new clothing or parts for your bike, so it’s worth exploring them, especially since they can be very tricky spots.

That being said, if there’s no footage, it didn’t happen. That’s why there’s an extensive Replat Editor you can use to record lines, edit out all the bails, take sweet screenshots, and eventually post it onto the internet for your friends to see. Just be mindful to lower your volume to zero if you want to post clips. Darn you, copyright!

Onto technical performance and… huh? Where are the issues? I usually note down glitches and performance hiccups in these reviews but I didn’t encounter any of them! No framedrops. No flickering textures, not even my ragdoll flying into the sky. I didn’t use an SSD for faster loading; it just loads in an instant with no pop-in. That’s pretty nice since you need to back out to the main menu to change levels, so if you’re stuck/bored with one area, you can easily switch to another in seconds.

In conclusion, Streetdog BMX is just a polished arcade-style BMX game. I do have some gripes about the controls, but with enough practice and tweaks, you can definitely master everything this game has to offer. If you’re into bikes and all this jazz, this is the game for you.