Nobody likes alarm bells. An alarm bell nearly always heralds the arrival of something bad or unpleasant - anything from waking up on a cold Monday morning to evacuating a burning building. Alarms are bad news, trust us.

The OXM office has a special alarm reserved for suspect games. In the case of Toxic Grind, it first went off when we received word of an extreme sports title that's main claim to fame was that it was the first BMX game to incorporate a storyline. A storyline in an extreme sports game - surely that can't be as important as graphics, handling, playability and excitement? Well, according to THQ and Blue Shift, it can be.

In the future, BMX riding is illegal. It's a crime punishable by having to compete in a series of extreme challenges for a reality TV show called Toxic Grind. Unfortunately, the culling of many BMX riders has resulted in the bad guy, Dixon Von Blass, resorting to time travel to snare fresh meat. And as an American hotshot BMX champ who gets zapped from the present to the future, that's where you come in.

The purpose of this patchy plot is basically to present a BMX game in a different light. But if developers are going to diversify from the core skills of making a competent extreme sports title, then they really need to have mastered the fundamental requirements first.

Ultimately, a BMX game - with or without a story - is still a BMX game. As such, it needs to have responsive handling, playability, an authentic feel and heaps of excitement as its cornerstone, long before getting into the bells and whistles of a plot. The plot in this game basically consists of different settings to do the same standard biking stuff of having to pull off enough tricks to survive the level or out-trick an AI opponent - it doesn't really offer anything new.

Toxic Grind fails because it hasn't really paid enough attention to delivering a worthwhile BMX experience, instead trying to smokescreen the issue with a poor story that may as well not be there. The collision detection is unstable - with wheels occasionally sinking into the track, fortunately not resulting in a crash. There is little sensation of fluid play and you never really achieve the same feeling of zipping along, as you do in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series - even though you're in charge of a much faster vehicle than a skateboard.

There are a couple of nice touches, such as a few imaginative power-ups and a couple of visually appealing tracks, but it doesn't disguise the fact that Toxic Grind is just a very average game. If two-wheeled grinding and verting is your thing, check out Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 instead.

1. A few cool power-ups and tracks
2. It's not as bad as Gravity Games

1. Clunky controls
2. Rarely satisfying
3. As quick as a punctured tricycle

Power
Sorry, you must be thinking of a different game. There's nothing to see here, move along.

Style
There are a few imaginative tracks but they can't disguise a general lack of flair or polish.

Immersion
Nobody is going to be fooled by the story. It's just another series of tracks to wipe out on.

Lifespan
Plenty of tracks to work through, if you haven't got anything better to do, that is.

Summary
Feeling a bit curious? Then rent it. Otherwise, your hard-earned money can be put to much better use elsewhere.