Downhill Domination is a game about riding your bike too fast and plowing into a tree. It is also, for variety, a game about riding your bike too fast and plowing into a mountain goat. It features a large and exciting array of ways to skin your knees, dislocate your shoulders, and shatter your elbows. It is all about hurting yourself, really, with a bit of Xtreem sport tossed in to explain the bruises. It is much more fun than that sounds.

The game's official setting is the world of professional downhill mountain bike racing. (You did not know there was such a sport? You really must pay more attention. Last year there was a big flappy to-do about PDMBR, when Michelle Dumaresq won a spot on the Canadian women's side over the protests of her teammates. Their objection? That Dumaresq used to be a man and therefore had an unfair advantage over the other women. The flap mostly went away after she placed 24th at the World Championships in Austria.)

If Downhill Domination offers any insight into that real-world dilemma, it is this: Muscle mass is hardly the whole story. Steering, for example, is infinitely more important, as is the ability to throw a bottle accurately at another racer's head.

At this point it is probably best to note that not everything in the game is an accurate reflection of flesh-and-blood PDMBR. For one thing, the race courses are crawling with pedestrians, many of whom are much, much too dim to notice that a race is going on and maybe it wouldn't hurt to get out of the way. If you are near the back of the pack riding through a pedestrian-infested area, you will find their limp bicycle-mangled carcasses lying everywhere. Despite everything your mother taught you, you will think this is hilarious.

The mountains and streetscapes here are dotted with glowing little balls of light, which variously provide you with blasts of speed, or the energy to pedal extra hard, or the miraculous ability to re-mount your bike the instant you smash into a goat. Doing silly tricks while airborne (clapping your hands or kicking like a Ukrainian dancer, for example) somehow recharges your sprinting legs, too.

The best and most useful glowy power-up items increase your ability to wage war on the other riders. Grab one of these, and you can suddenly kick other bikers instead of merely punching them. Grab another and you get a stick you can use to jam spokes and slap riders about the head and shoulders. Grab another still, and you're suddenly armed with bottles. Heavy, heat-seeking bottles that chase your rivals down the hill and break their femurs. You can really never have enough bottles.

Like most racing titles, this one comes with a fistful of variations on the basic premise. You can race down the hill all by yourself, you can race with computer-controlled opponents, or you can race against your real-life friends in the same room. You can race a single track or combine several challenges into a "career." You can choose which shirt your racer wears. These features are so par-for-the-course you may not even notice them.

What you really should notice is the sheer liberty the game gives you. The mountains and staircases and, er, castles that make up the wide-open tracks are happy to indulge you, no matter where you drive. There are secret shortcuts everywhere. There are hidden tunnels cut into rock faces. A wrong turn off the wrong cliff may drop you 300 feet, and also move you from fourth to first place. It is the perfect balance of God-like power and human frailty: You cannot be killed and you cannot be stopped, but you are forever breaking your nose and bleeding on your shirt.