Dave Mirra manages to not completely rip off Tony Hawk, and yet still be quite good in its own way.
And in some ways better. First of all, the game feels quite a bit different from Tony Hawk which is fitting since BMX is quite a bit different than skate boarding. But not completely different. The gameplay is a little more realistic in the types of tricks (and especially combos) you can pull in a single jump. The controls do respond a little differently than in Tony Hawk games. You won't be able to immediately pick this one up and play it (which is good if you've mastered Tony Hawk games already). I haven't been playing long, but I've also noticed that the game's framerate has been much better so far, and without any real sacrifice to the graphics that I can see. The filtering is very, very smooth all around, and the textures are very crisp. This doesn't look like a Dreamcast game. Finally, the music is more to my liking than the stuff in Tony Hawk 3, however there are only 10 tracks as opposed to 18 and you can't disable the ones you don't like. I'll be playing Dave Mirra 2 more in the next couple of days and should have a review soon.