Of course it’s no surprise at all when you consider who developed it. Rainbow Studios has been at the forefront of the Motocross genre for quite some time. When you consider games like Motocross Madness 1 and 2, ATV Off-road Fury 1 and 2, Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX, and MX Unleashed it is clear that Rainbow Studios has been around the circuit once or twice.

MX Vs. ATV Unleashed is the essential culmination of that experience and expertise. Considered a sequel to MX Unleashed, it adds All Terrain Vehicles to the mix and offers you your choice between the two vehicle types when competing in the championship mode. Like its predecessor, you can unlock machines other than bikes and ATVs to tear around in like helicopters, biplanes, and monster trucks. However, they are still only a minor diversion and handle nowhere near as elegantly as the two primary vehicle types.

When it comes to the game play itself, concerning the two main vehicle types, it definitely comes across as fluid. The control melds together with the physics implementation in a seamless fashion that is the definition of intuitive. You basically control the position of your character on the bike or ATV. If you move the stick right, your character shifts his weight to the right causing the bike to turn faster in that direction. Pressing up leans you forward and pitches your bike in that direction whereas holding back causes the bike to rotate the other direction. You can imagine doing this in real life and it having the same effect.

Forces are modeled so realistically that if you take a jump too hard and end up landing past the downward ramp you will wipeout and have to respawn after a timer. If you take a jump too soft, you won’t clear the hill you are jumping and will lose a great deal of speed. It is also important that you align the wheels in a manner appropriate to what you are trying to do. Suppose you made a perfect jump and are heading for the downward sloping far part of the jump. You want to lean forward and force the front of the bike or ATV down. This way all wheels hit the ground at the same time and you get instant traction back. Another situation might have you too short of the far down slope. If you lean back just enough to let your back wheels connect first, then immediately slam the front ones down, you may just save yourself from wiping out and losing valuable seconds.

While you are racing, it behooves you to execute as many tricks as you can. Executing tricks gets you points that you can use to buy new bikes, tracks, or gear for your racers. Forget about the ego trip you go on when you dust the competition while popping a wheelie or doing a back flip on a bike. What am I saying, that’s one of the coolest aspects of this game. I was frustrated at first with the number of jumps in the earlier maps that were not conducive to performing tricks. My first impression was, “Oh great, this game is broken” because there were so few jumps that gave you enough air time to finish even a single trick.

The game is exonerated by its later tracks that include enough high jumps to do said back flips and also do combination tricks. Beware though; the physics when it comes to wiping out while doing tricks is very touchy. They’re touchy to a fault. I understand that if you land upside-down, you should not be allowed to continue. I’ll even admit that on some level, a person could lose control of their bike or ATV if they are not completely in position before the bike lands. But this game gives you no breaks. There is no threshold for being close enough to complete the trick and no minor penalty for holding a trick a little too long. Just a suggestion, but maybe you could make the bike behave unpredictably for a second because the rider is not in perfect control. But do you have to wipeout?

Another area that could use a little modification is vehicle collisions. It makes sense that when two objects collide they will have interesting reactions. But the reaction should fit the action. If I land on someone, they are toast. Fine. Dandy even. But if I just barely rub tires with someone on the track, especially on an ATV, or if my character barely comes in contact with another character or vehicle I should not be spun out of control and penalized.

Well such is the case in this game and under normal circumstances this kind of touchy collision detection would make the game almost unplayable. Luckily and at the same time horribly, the game AI compensates for this added difficulty by giving up some realism. Depending on the difficulty of the AI in a given race, the other racers will actually let you catch up to them. At times, you can wipeout over and over and over again and still win first place. As you progress through the championship circuits, you may notice them getting a little tougher on you, but even the later races make it hard to come in less than fourth even if you try.

Other than the few nits I have pointed out, the controls and physics are spot on. Leaving us with basically just graphics and music to cover. While it’s no Gran Turismo 4, MX Vs. ATV Unleashed is not bad looking it just lacks a lot of geometric detail. It does come with a progressive scan mode that looks excellent even if there isn’t a great deal of detail in the models or landscapes to take advantage of it.

The music and sound is a constant mix of current rock hits and engine sound effects. Expect to hear groups like the Black Eyed Peas or Power Man 5000. But don’t expect a humongous variety. After an extended period of time playing, the music, though I tend to like it, all melts together. It reminds me a little of playing Crazy Taxi for the fourth straight hour and later hearing The Offspring in my head in the dead silence of the room. Good stuff in small doses I suppose.

To conclude, MX Vs. ATV Unleashed is a damn fine game. You might be hard pressed to find enough differences between this version and its predecessor to justify purchasing it if you already own MX Unleashed, but I personally enjoyed racing the ATVs much more than the bikes and would pick this version over its forebear any day. It is a good game to own for all types of people. You don’t need to be into the sport to get a kick out of it. You don’t even really need to be very good at racing games. Learning curve is not steep and it’s a game that can easily involve your friends. Definitely check this one out if you are looking for a new game and are unsure of exactly what to get. This one could very well be a fit.