Untamed is developed by Rainbow Studio, a name that quite a few ATV game fans should be familiar with. They were the team behind the first two excellent ATV Offroad Fury titles on the PS2, which were lauded for their track design and their arcade style gameplay. In fact, Rainbow Studio has been turning out off-road racers for nearly 10 years now (going back to '98 with Motorcross Madness), so safe to say, you'll get what you expect out of Untamed. Unfortunately, the old mentality of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" seems to be in full effect here, and the game definitely suffers from an extreme sense of familiarity.

Untamed features a variety of gameplay modes, and introduces a few new ones. However, the Endurocross mode will be a bit masochistic to most casual players, with a course literally filled with debris that requires a sort of pinpoint precision to navigate. The second mode, Opencross, is definitely more newbie friendly, allowing you to plow thru a course at full speed abandoning the almost sim like aspects of Enduro. Rounding things out is a tournament style mode with the X-Cross Tournament, which offers up the ability to unlock various tournaments to move the single player game along. While each of these modes are new to the series, they hardly feel fresh and exciting. Granted, they're solid additions to the game, but they hardly propel the series to new heights.

Visually, Untamed doesn't hold up as well for a next-gen offering. The textures could definitely use a bit more work, and the riders all appear to be pretty wooden. Draw distance is a bit low too, which is disappointing considering how wide open a lot of the playing fields are. The track design is definitely appealing, but once again, the core gameplay is so familiar that hitting the big ramps over and over again will start to get old quickly.

Online play holds up well, but has some definite lag issues when you get into a full match. Whether this has to do with the connections of other players or some other fault of the game itself is unclear, but keep in mind that there are a few issues you'll encounter here and there. However, nothing ends up being game breaking, and if you're able to get into a large match with a group of friends, you'll definitely have a lot of fun.

Untamed also offers a bit of vehicle customization, spread out across all the available vehicle types, such at Monster Trucks, ATV's, Motorcross bikes, buggies and trophy trucks. Most of the options are purely visual, with little to offer in the way of actual performance upgrades.

For the PS3 and 360 versions, you won't notice a huge difference in gameplay or visuals. They're pretty much identical in execution, so it really comes down to a preference of system.

The PS2 version is a total mess though, developed by Incinerator Games. The controls are unresponsive and far to loose, and the whole thing is just a chore to try and play thru. If you're absolutely limited to just the PS2, then I'd have to say you should avoid this title. I'm not sure how the gameplay is lost in transition here, but it definitely takes a big step backward for the series. Also, the textures are a blurry mess, and the tracks suffer the most from this drawback. The ground looks like something out of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, and the vehicle/character models don't fare too well either.

Thankfully, the PSP version is far, far better than its console cousin, and is more akin to the gameplay featured in the next-gen offerings. The visuals are average for a PSP title, but the controls easy to use and definitely responsive. Small changes are made to the tournament structure of the single player mode, but nothing that takes a turn for the worse. There's also the inclusion of an event mode, which you can either access by driving around a large map or simply access these events from a pause menu. The events are a bit inconsistent when it comes to working as intended, but the provide a decent distraction from the core tournament mode.

The DS version, marks the first attempt to bring the series to the handheld, and is developed by Tantalus (the PSP devs) specifically for the system. Obviously everything is scaled down, with just 4 racers per track and 10 tracks to choose from overall. However, the gameplay makes the transition to Nintendo's handheld quite well, and once you get the hang of the track layouts and the use of pre-load jumps. However, the game does fall on the short side of things, with not much to do after completing the tournament modes for both the MX and ATV side of things. Also, there's no online mode either, with just an ad hoc 4-player mode that does require all users to own the game.

So while MX vs. ATV Untamed is a solid Offroad racer, it hardly offers up anything new for the franchise. Long time fans will most likely already be on board, but first time players shouldn't expect to be entranced for long with core gameplay. Online modes breath a bit more life into things, but a stability issues will most likely throw some users off of the whole experience. Worth checking out if you're a fan, but I'd at least demo it before you buy.