E3 06: Crusty Demons Hands-On

LOS ANGELES--If you're a hardcore fan of freestyle Moto-X biking, you might have heard of the Crusty Demons of Dirt, a series of straight-to-DVD movies featuring a bunch of crazies riding motorcycles in some of the most extreme ways possible. The Crusty Demons have achieved an entirely new level of fame with the announcement of Crusty Demons: The Game, a freestyle Moto-X game that looks to put a capital X in extreme motorcycling games. Today, we had a chance to try out a work-in-progress version of Crusty Demons.

Developed by the talented crew at Climax (known for their previous work on ATV Offroad Fury 3 and its PlayStation Portable counterpart, Blazin' Trails) Crusty Demons is a trick-based motorcycle game that will feature a host of different urban driving environments, including Cancun, Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Arizona. The main gameplay in Crusty Demons is composed of running around an open-ended environment and picking up missions from folks hanging out on the street. These missions vary from specific trick challenges, such as holding a trick for a certain amount of time, to making delivery missions across the open-ended environments.

The game's storyline involves members of the actual Crusty Demons crew, who, at the beginning of the game, die while performing their death-defying stunts. Making a deal with the devil, the crew is allowed to earn back their souls by--how else?--performing more death-defying stunts. These stunts in the game include standard wheelies and stoppies and more-elaborate midair tricks such as bar hops. You'll even be able to string together combo moves for even more points as you go. Of course, even if you don't manage to stick your landing, that's OK. The game will be measuring each pint of blood lost and each broken bone you suffer, and your bike will break apart during particularly nasty spills as well. The game will even give you the option to bail off your bike if you find yourself in a tight spot in midair.

Crusty Demons will feature a total of 38 different vehicles to trash, including standard dirt bikes and ATVs, super bikes, and even ice-cream trucks, as well as licensed Crusty Demons riders such as Seth Enslow, Ronnie Faisst, and Jeremy "Twitch" Stenberg. There will also be a movie maker of sorts, allowing you to cut your own version of Crusty Demons footage, complete with full camera and playback controls. You might not be able to re-create some of the insane stunts found in real Crusty Demons movies, but you'll probably be able to come pretty close. The game is due for release later this year. Stay tuned for more information.