December 24, 2004

By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News

The Discovery Channel TV show American Chopper is one of the coolest things on the tube right now, and should have made for a great video game.

Unfortunately, Activision had no idea how to use this franchise.

Platform: PlayStation 2 and Xbox

Price: $29

Age rating: suitable for ages 13 and up

The story so far: American Chopper is a reality show following a small custom motorcycle shop named Orange County Choppers in New York state that hit the big time. The bikes are hundred-thousand-dollar works of art, but the show has developed a cult following mostly due to the hilarious love-hate relationship between the owner of the shop, Paul Teutul, and his sons, lead designer Paul Jr. and pudgy goofball Mikey.

Activision or, rather, the company's Value Publishing arm, which produced this game, had an interesting premise: let the gamer work in the shop as a new hire and ride some of the show's signature motorcycles.

What went wrong: The short segments in the OCC shop are lame. There's a handful of generic parts to slap onto a frame. There's no explanation for why one part is better than another, no price tags to pass along the thrill of squandering a small fortune and, the most egregious sin of all, very limited dialogue between Paul Sr. and Paul Jr. Gamers are paying $29 mostly to watch these guys yell and scream and curse at each other, but there's precious little of the histrionics that define the TV show. And where's Mikey? That lazy loser is one of the best parts of the show, but he's nowhere to be seen in the game.

On the open road: The segments on the bikes are OK, and some of them are pretty inventive, such as a poker mode, in which players race other bikers to waypoints to get playing cards. When you think you have a strong hand, race back to the starting point to "call." The wipeouts are also fun to watch, with a Matrix-style rotating camera, but you can't really do any cool stunts or jumps.

No extras: But even with all that is wrong with this game, Activision could have placated fans with bonus items on the disk, such as high-resolution photos of OCC's signature choppers, behind-the-scenes video at the shop, or interviews with fans, customers and motorcycle historians. That may be too tall of an order for the budget division of Activision, but given the popularity of the show, this shouldn't have been a budget game anyway. Heck, there's more fun at OCC's Web site: OrangeCountyChoppers.com.

Control issues

If the force-feedback vibration in your controller isn't powerful enough for you, you might want to check out Pyramat's PM 550 Sound Lounger.

This orange floor mat has two speakers and a subwoofer built into the headrest. Unroll it, plug everything in and let the vibrations slowly melt your brain.

The mat gets a little uncomfortable after a while if you have your head propped up on the headrest, but the vibration is kind of cool and really turned the muted motorcycle engines in American Chopper into body-rumbling thunder.

The 550 costs $149 and is available at PyraMat.com.

NFL to EA

Electronic Arts has signed exclusive agreements with the NFL and the NFL Players Association for all use of NFL team names, stadiums and players in video games during the next five years.

In other words, no one but EA can make a video game that features real NFL players or teams.

Put more succinctly, sayonara, Sega.

The agreement, for which EA reportedly paid more than $300 million, is a nuclear strike aimed at Sega's highly regarded ESPN 2K football franchise.

For consumers, the deal means fewer choices if Sega decides to pull out of the football business.

The NFL might end up regretting this decision as well.

Free of the constraints of NFL licensing policies, publisher Midway has said it will develop a non-NFL football game that dramatizes the seamy underbelly of professional sports.

The company even said it has hired one of the screenwriters from the canceled ESPN series Playmakers, which took the same approach and horrified the NFL, to help pen the game, dubbed Blitz: Playmakers.

Sounds like fun.