Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim Review

Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim has players in the proverbial shoes of mountain bike legend Sam Pilgrim as they ride through a variety of terrain to pull off various tricks. The developer has aimed to make this game the most authentic mountain bike gaming experience.

The easiest way to describe Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim’s gameplay? Imagine Ubisoft’s Trial Fusions, but on a mountain bike; except the emphasis on physics isn’t as intense. Each track has players gaining speed, not by pedaling but by holding down the A button, so they can get enough air to pull off pretty cool tricks but also have enough momentum to get over the next hill. Now I’m not a mountain bike expert, however, I always figured that pedaling was required when on a bicycle. It’s definitely the game’s biggest nuisance here. On a few occasions, I ran out of momentum riding up a less than steep hill and I couldn’t pedal up it; it’s frustrating because it’s doesn’t give players a chance to catch up.

The game features a handful of tricks which are, thankfully, easy to execute with enough speed and momentum. The left joystick lets out do a front or backflip, RB makes you do a 360 and the pushing the right joystick in one of the 8 directions lets you pull crazy moves like Superman. You can also do manuals by slightly holding the left joystick back or forward. You can also pedal or brake with LT and RT respectively, but I sincerely didn’t find any use for them. While, as I mentioned, you’d assume pedaling would be helpful in circumstances other than a flat surface, there’s barely any need for it.

Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim also includes a whooping 40 hand crafted levels. In order to be able to move forward to the next and progress, you need to attain a set quantity of stars per level. In order to do so, you need to clear the track’s objectives which can vary from reaching the finish, earn 3000 points or tweak a trick in mid-air.

One nuisance is there sometimes the game’s goals aren’t clear. While before riding down the path you can access a list of things to accomplish before reaching the end, an objective can be vague or mean something else entirely. For example, during one of the tutorial levels, one of the objectives is to do any trick. So I was doing back/front flips or a 360, but I still didn’t get it. Now don’t get me wrong, but I always thought that doing those were considered tricks.

Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim actually looks great with its lush and colorful visuals, character model is pretty basic, nothing that really pops out; it’s hard to say if the character model actually looks like it’s virtual counterpart considering the game’s point of view. On the audio side of things, the game features a nice mix of ambient, low house tracks which is quite fitting.

As much as I had high hopes for Shred! 2 Ft. Sam Pilgrim, I came away disappointed. The game feels more like an attempt to mountain bike-ify Ubisoft’s Trials Fusion series. The tricks are easy to pull off and look pretty awesome, but relying on the game’s momentum feels like it’s making this more difficult than should. Also pedaling’s lack of realism is also a bit baffling here as it can hinder a comeback mid-track.