Toxic Grind

It’s the year 2097, BMX riding has been outlawed, and much like present day,
the television is filled with ‘reality‘ shows. One of these reality
TV shows is showcasing the public execution of the fugitives that continue to
ride BMX bikes! Before appearing on the show riders are injected with a deadly
toxin that will slowly but surely put them in a peaceful place. The devilish
game show host Dixon Von Blass finally sees the errors in his plan
. . . the contestants are dying too quickly, and ratings are going down the
tubes. In an effort to increase ratings, the maniacal host brings you to the
future, since you are defined as the greatest rider of your time, 2002.

It’s now up to you to play it out through 11 insanely developed levels, all
filled with the basics you’d expect from a BMX game, with quite a few death-traps
mixed in, just to sweeten the action a bit. Let’s head on over to the show,
try and save the ratings, and ultimately learn if Toxic Grind
is worth tuning in to!

The core of the gameplay in Toxic Grind centers around the
Underground mode, the story mode of the title, much of which
we have briefly detailed above. The short and sweet of it is that you need to
successfully compete against the other riders and ultimately take out the game
show host to win, since the host has no intentions of actually letting anyone
survive. The story seemed to be created well enough, and albeit a bit far fetched,
it is the first time we’ve even seen a story incorporated into a BMX game.

Much of the gameplay is standard fare for Xbox BMX titles, incorporating such
moves as grinds, stalls, special tricks, air
combos, and more. Controlling your rider should be fairly simple to anyone
that has played the other extreme sports titles out there, including the skateboarding
ones, as the control setup is very similar to the more popular ones available,
like Tony Hawk. ‘A‘ to accelerate and bunny hop, ‘B‘
for loop tricks, ‘X‘ for hold tricks, and ‘Y‘ for grind tricks.
One nice addition to the control scheme is the quick 180 degree turn
you can perform through the press of the right or left trigger. Like many gaming
engines out there, Toxic Grind does have it’s set of flaws, and while many moves
and tricks go off without a hitch, you may often wonder why others don’t, as
they appear perfectly executed onscreen. Some of the practice value may have
been diminished as well, as some grinds are just to simple to perform. All in
all however, there is an ample number of tricks, most of which seem convincing,
and the gameplay is fun.

The big difference between Toxic Grind and the other BMX titles is that there
is the looming ‘death factor,’ portrayed by a Toxin
Meter in the top right of the screen. Once this fills up with toxin,
you’re dead! The only way to offset the increasing
amount of toxins in your system is to increase your Adrenaline by performing
faster and longer combos in succession. The problem here is that the adrenaline
can be filled rather quickly, and the toxin fills relatively slowly, so more
than often there just isn’t that sense of danger, as you might expect from a
game where you’re going to die! In addition to the Underground
mode there are several other venues of gameplay. Arcade mode allows
you to trick it up on any of the completed Underground tracks, Pro Circuit
lets you select the courses, as if creating a competition, and see if you can
come out number one. There is also a minimal selection of Multiplayer modes
available including Quick Draw, Score War, Turf War,
and Tug of War. Probably the most fun out of these is Tug of
War, where you need to pull off tricks and combos quicker than your
opponent (or steal their points) to reach the goal of 10,000 points
before he or she does and ultimately win. The only drawback to the multiplayer
levels is that there is not a lot of customizations available.

Whether playing alone, or multiplayer, there are inherent qualities of the
game that just seem to damper the total enjoyment of the title, mainly the sometimes
sluggish controls and the often ‘off the mark‘ collision detection.
The addition of deadly objects and traps throughout the game was nice, and added
to the whole ‘you’re gonna die sucker‘ theme, but
they became more like triggered events, or obstacles that were just too avoidable
in the first place. Without a doubt there is a lot of fun to be had in Toxic
Grind, but it truly could have been so much better with just some slight adjustments
to some of the core gameplay elements.

Graphically, Toxic Grind isn’t a particularly bad looking game,
and actually looks pretty sweet through many of the levels, but it displays
nothing exceptionally and can seem to be a ‘cookie cutter‘ randomization
at times. Character animations are done well, but for a console with so much
power, you’ll wonder why it’s not much more crisp. The frame rate was smooth
and steady throughout the game, with the exception of multiplayer, where we
experienced some drops. Cut scenes are done through a series of still images
coated with photo-shop type effects, and lend themselves well for the comic
book style narrations. All in all, nothing spectacular, but nothing that really
detracts from the game either.

The audio in Toxic Grind is decent. There is a rather different soundtrack
that is included that surprisingly lends itself well to the game, but ultimately
doesn’t increase the intensity of the game as it sometimes seems a bit too mellow
for the whole deathmatch BMX aspect of the game. The soundtrack, composed by
Mesmer is actually much better listening while outside
of the game. Narrations during cut scenes are done well, and convincingly, and
do add to the feeling of excitement, unfortunately it basically cuts off there,
and gameplay is void of anticipation. General ambient sounds are effective,
but a grind on a rail or a curb sound exactly the same. A bit of variety added
to the mix would have added greatly. If you don’t particularly care for the
soundtrack you can import your custom soundtrack off the Xbox hard drive, an
option that could come in handy.

It’s a lot of fun to see how high the trick scores can get,
but the single player mode once beaten doesn’t offer a whole lot in terms of
coming back every day to see what you can accomplish. Multiplayer would have
helped out by leaps and bounds had there been more customizations available,
but sadly not.

Overall Score: 7.1/10 [Not an Average]

It’s nice to finally see some sort of story
associated with a BMX title, but Toxic Grind falls short in many aspects and
can only be recommended as a rental. I particularly have an odd taste in games,
and even though I find myself tossing this one in my Xbox more than I like to
admit, I find it hard to believe the masses will. Give it a try, there is a
lot of fun to be had if you can look past the flaws and enjoy what Toxic Grind
has to offer.

• Official Game Site
• THQ
• Blue Shift
• Kabuki Digital
  (Mesmer)
• Toxic
  Grind Screenshots (Temporarily Unavailable, Sorry.)
• Toxic
  Grind Hints and Cheats

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