When I was first handed Crusty Demons for review, my first words were “what in blazes is this” (edited because my original words are a little too hot to be written here). Then I popped it into my Xbox, checked out the intro and realized that I actually knew the guys on the screen – Twitch Stenberg, Ronnie Faisst, and “Cowboy” Kenny Bartram of X Games fame. Then I realized that CD played like recent Tony Hawk titles, except with dirt bikes instead of skateboards. It was there that I realized this game had potential. After that is another story.

Crusty Demons starts off with the crew dying after performing some insane stunt. However, the prince of darkness himself steps in and offers the Demons a deal. He’ll resurrect them and offer them immortality in exchange for their services. Needless to say, they take the deal, and also needless to say, there’s a catch. They are indeed immortal, but he said nothing about feeling pain, so every crash will still feel very painful.

After the success of the Tony Hawk series, many extreme sports games have emulated its style of gameplay. Crusty Demons is no different. Take Tony Hawk’s UnderGround, replace all of the skaters with the Demon crew and other fictional characters, change their modes of transportation and trickeration from skateboards to dirt bikes, and you have Crusty Demons. Both riders and bikes have their own stat ratings, so be sure to keep that in mind when selecting who and what machine to ride.

Levels are set up as sandboxes, letting you go where ever, and goals/missions are initiated by talking to a local NPC. There’s a good variety of missions too, ranging from checkpoint races to destroying buildings to using your rider as a projectile. Yes, the ragdoll type minigames from the Flatout series have made their way here as some missions, and the animations of the flying bodies and their subsequent crashes are hilarious. It’s too bad though that it’s the same animation over and over again, so once you’ve seen it the first time, it’s no different the countless other times. Sad considering it pervades quite a bit of the mission gameplay. The largest obstacle in each level is the three-tiered stunt contest. You’ll need to impress some of the NPCs with high scores, which are easy to obtain if you can link tricks together to combo points. This is mostly done through the use of wheelies, the bike equivalent of a manual for those of you more familiar with the skater jargon.

Outside of that story mode is another one called devil’s rush. It’s a different name, but it still borrows a bit from Tony Hawk. In devil’s rush, you’re given a time limit to complete as many goals as you can before the timer runs out. It’s the same as Birdman’s classic modes. Crusty Demons also features free ride which lets you explore the levels at your own leisure and split-screen multiplayer so you can wreak havoc with up to three of your friends.

Many games have emulated the Hawk series, but few have pulled it off successfully. Crusty Demons falls in the latter. It can be fun for a little while, but it slowly becomes frustrating as some of the goals become progressively difficult to achieve. Most of the time, it’s because of the horrible control scheme, specifically for ground tricks, but sometimes the goal itself is just insane. In particular are the ones where you need to launch and aim your rider at a target. The target window for some of them are so small, you’ll wonder anyone could possibly to do it. And remember I mentioned that there’s only one launch animation, so you’ll see and hear the same flight repeated during each attempt. Frustrating and annoying – two words gamers love to hear.

Ground tricks aren’t even worth using. Performing them involves contorting your fingers in the oddest of ways. Luckily, you can get through the entire game without having to bother with them at all.

Heck, sometimes finding the goals themselves is a challenge in itself because the supplied minimap is anything but helpful. Now that is frustrating especially when trying to complete a timed challenge and have no clue where to go next. And some portions of a few stages can only be accessed through one entry point, and if you can’t find it, then you’re straight out of luck.

Graphically, the game isn’t that bad looking. The riders and bikes are decently modeled and the animations are smooth thanks to a frame rate that doesn’t drop. The problems lie in the loads of clipping and some really bad camera bugs.

Speaking of bugs, the audio has some problems as well. CD supports custom soundtracks, which is good for those of you who don’t like the smattering of rock CD features. However, when selecting what songs to use, sometimes when you highlight a song, a different song plays in the preview. When this happened to me, I started to let the song preview dictate what songs I selected. Then, when I actually got into the game, the songs that were selected were actually the ones that were highlighted. It’s not a game breaking bug, but like the rest of the game, it’s kind of annoying to have to learn of it that way. But, if you’re, at least you were warned. Oh and while we’re on the subject of the sound, I’d just like to point out that the voice acting in downright horrible. That’s all that needs to be said about that.

The game’s wacky premise and borrowing elements from a critically acclaimed series gave Crusty Demons the potential to be a decent sleeper title. But, potential is nothing if you can’t do anything with it. Crusty Demons should be left collecting dust in a bargain bin near you.

Frustrating controls leave much to be desired.

Not too bad, but suffers from a lot of clipping and a buggy camera.

Odd custom soundtrack glitch; laughable voice acting.

So much potential wasted. Maybe next time – if there is a next time.

Plenty of riders and bikes to use; multiple difficulty levels.

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