Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX: Maximum Remix (2001)
Maximum Remix takes the first Dave Mirra game and adds a few new levels, songs and tweaks some of the original objectives of the first game and makes it a more complete package. Not much more can really be said about it. In modern terms this is much more of a 1.5 release type game than anything new. I guess the fact that it is literally called the same thing as the original, with a subtitle involving the word “remix” as well, does give you a basic understanding of what this game really is.
Even starting the game up for the first time you are met with the same exact menus, with the colors tweaked up a bit. Once you load up the level select, you are able to enjoy three new levels right off the bat. The first one is a circus level, then to a supermarket parking lot and then a school. The circus does feel very cramped and doesn’t really allow you to take advantage of something like what the Tony Hawk series would allow you to do. There are things like a funhouse, haunted dark ride and a carousel, all of which don’t allow you to interact with them in any way. Which immediately puts a damper on the whole level. That and the layout is so close together and cramped that you don’t feel like you really are able to get a good lay of the land. And sadly that is how most of the levels feel. You never have time to pull back a bit and get a good look at the level as a whole.
The objectives take a large dive into extreme difficulty very quickly. I would have loved to be able to not have to rack by brain by having to line up jumps perfectly while just stopped and sitting on my bike and then have almost no time to actually execute. Everything just feels very rushed and forced. While the original game felt like even though there was a timer, this game, which is just a remixed version feels so much more hectic and tiresome.
The game itself is pretty much the same game with a few odds and ends changed up. There are several new items or areas to explore, a section blocked off that was there before, but for the most part this is what would resemble a patch to a game with some DLC is in modern gaming. Which ends up making the original game pointless to play unless you are someone like myself, who likes to play through each game in a series no matter at what cost.
Once I finished the new trio of levels, I was forced to play the original set of levels, which had some different objectives, most of the changed objectives focused on me performing modified tricks that require you to go look at the trick list menu and then combine several of them together as certain points. In one train of thought, it’s nice to have new objectives that are different, and not just the same exact thing, but at the same time, it just feels like a waste of time, its the same levels, and just a few of those are tweaked to do a different trick in a different area, which is usually much harder than anticipated. I spent a solid 15 minutes trying to do a no-handed turndown on the original first level, because of the placement of the trailer that I had to jump over. If it was just doing the trick, I probably could have spent a few minutes and then been able to accomplish it, but because it is required for me to leap off a trailer, over a fence, in a terribly hard to get to location to line up…. It became extremely frustrating.
Maximum Remix exists as an expansion DLC pack before those existed on consoles. What we ended up with was a few new levels and some additional objectives that require you to complete the entire same levels over again with harder tasks to be able to advance the level progression. I might never complete this game, as it just feels like a waste of time. I’d much rather go play Dave Mirra 2 on Xbox instead.