Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Escobar

THQ and Rainbow Studios have been producing the off-road racing series known as MX vs. ATV for several years now, and they pretty much have it down to a science.  Each new version (whether it is “MX vs. ATV Unleashed” or “MX vs. ATV Untamed” or any of the other solid titles in the franchise) has always shown great improvement in gameplay and quality, garnering tons of fans in the process.  Rarely has there been such a leap in pure gaming genius as there has been in this year’s version, named MX vs. ATV – Reflex (Reflex).  Most franchises are content to build each new version around a single key gameplay improvement, dress up the graphics a little bit, add another superstar endorsement for their sport and call it a day.  Not ones to rest on their laurels, Rainbow Studios made a couple of major changes with this title that manage to ratchet up the gameplay to a phenomenal level.

Whether it’s the huge, luxuriant outdoor environments or the extremely detailed indoor arenas, you’ll be blown away by the graphical quality of Reflex.  The open environments can be anything from lush, nearly tropical jungles to snow swept mountain peaks and everything in between.  Racing underneath the bright blue skies, across the shallow rivers, and through the hills and valleys makes for a great immersive experience.

The Free Ride portion of the game takes full advantage of the stellar graphics engine.  Set up as an open-world sandbox (pun intended), players are able to pick their favorite dirt bike, quad, sport truck, or buggy and just tear around the beautiful landscapes.  Taking it a step further, Free Ride is also available as a multiplayer mode, leaving players to pretty much create their own contests.  Out exploring and see someone pull off a huge No Hander off the hill in front of you?  Find your way up there and try to duplicate that feat, or better yet, show them up by landing a Body Varial!  Free Ride is all about spur of the moment fun, letting whatever mood you’re in dictate what you do.  Ad hoc racing up and down a mountain, trick contests off a sweet jump, or pure exploration, it’s all out there and available to you.

Exploring is all well and good, but most of us came here to race, and Reflex’s racing component is nearly flawless.  In one of the major changes in the MX vs. ATV franchise, Rainbow Studios implemented persistent terrain deformation.  In Reflex, all the dirt has been modeled to have volume and memory.  If you were to sit in one spot and do donuts, you’d dig yourself a respectable hole in the ground.  In most games once you’re out of line of sight with the hole you dug, it disappears.  Not so in Reflex.  Not only are holes, skid marks, and ruts persistent, they have a huge effect on your racing and control. 

This effect is truly crucial during a race, as the course gets torn up more and more as the race progresses.  Combined with a solid racing AI, this makes every race a different experience.  To be honest, this makes every lap a new experience, as the course is constantly in flux.  You’ll need to not only know the general shape of the course to be successful, you’ll also need to watch for ruts that are on the racing line you choose, as well as avoiding gouged out dirt where other riders have crashed.

The only graphical issue I experienced in all my play time with Reflex was during online multiplayer matches.  During Snake or Tag contests, you’re randomly placed in the environment.  This works out just fine and adds an element of randomness to the game, but doesn’t work out so well when the game decides to start you off half way up a cliff or under the environment.  The only choice you have at this point is to either wait until someone wins the match and you go to the next round, or quit out and find another multiplayer game.  While this didn’t happen all the time, it occurred often enough to be an annoyance.

One of the nagging complaints of the previous version of MX vs. ATV was the mismatch between the sound of the dirt bike engine and what you were doing on-screen.  Specifically, you could be jumping on the gas down a straightaway, gear down into a corner and then accelerate out and the engine sound would never change, or the change in engine pitch would be far too late and far too loud for it to be anywhere near realistic.  For anyone who’s every ridden a dirt bike (or any vehicle with an internal combustion engine for that matter) this made no sense at all.  Thankfully Rainbow Studios addressed this glaring error and paid special attention to the sound quality throughout all of Reflex.  The vehicle sounds have been faithfully rendered, along with the sound of your (inevitable) crashes.

The other huge gameplay innovation for this title is the adaptation of the right stick to be used to control your character’s body lean.  The vast majority of games use the right stick to rotate the 3rd person camera, so this change takes a little getting used to.  Once you get over the very short learning curve, you’ll be hard pressed to imagine how you managed to control a dirt bike in previous games.  Just like in real life, leaning hard into a turn will make you corner much more sharply, while leaning back and accelerating will cause you to go into a wheelie.  Taking the control of the camera out of the player’s hands was initially a concern of mine, but I didn’t find a single spot during any of the races that this caused any kind of issue.  The developers should receive huge kudos for the excellent AI camera control in this game.

The right stick has also been drafted into use for another skill – crash recovery.  Instead of just setting an arbitrary height from which you can safely land jumps, Reflex gives you the chance to ride out your rough landings.  Whenever you land from a big jump, or even if your landing is a little off-line from a smaller jump, a large green arrow will flash on the screen.  Flick the right stick quickly in the direction the arrow was pointing, and you’ll recover from the landing and ride it out.  Respond too slowly and you’ll be treated to the developer’s implementation of ragdoll physics as you’re thrown from your ride.  While it may be fun to jump your ATV off a 150’ foot cliff and see yourself thrown from the wreckage at the bottom over and over again, at least you have a chance of surviving the landing with this excellent gameplay mechanic.

Variety is the name of the game when it comes to Reflex, as evidenced by all the options you have from the very start of gameplay.  Choices range from Arcade mode (choose from any of the types of racing and have some quick fun), Motocareer (start a career and fight your way up through the ranks, earning new rides), LAN (locally connected consoles) and Online (random matches and races online).

While there are still plenty of things to unlock through gameplay, a ton of game modes are available right from the start.  Been kicking butt in Motocareer on Waypoint races and want to see how you stack up against other players?  You’re covered.  Want to Free Ride locally with some buddies and do a little exploring?  THQ has you covered there too.

There is loads of replay value in Reflex – you’ve got piles of new rides to unlock, a racing career to conquer, trophies to hunt down, and the joys of Free Ride to explore.  The crowning glory of Reflex’s multiplayer has to be the two competitive modes: Snake and Tag.  Snake goes old school and borrows a page from the Tron Light Cycle playbook; each contest starts in a large area reminiscent of one of the Free Ride zones.  The difference here is that each rider has a light stream, or Snake, that trails out behind them.  If you run into someone else’s “Snake” (or your own for that matter), you’re eliminated from the match.  Reflex takes this a step further than Tron did, by making all the snakes exist in 3D – this allows riders the chance to ride under or jump over other Snakes, bringing a huge measure of skill into the contest.  The fun is not over when you’re knocked out though, you respawn back into the match and get to continue racing around, trying to run into other players and knock them off their bikes.

The other competitive multiplayer mode, Tag, starts off with a huge bouncing head somewhere in the environment.  To help tracking down the head (or whoever is wearing it) your radar shows you the direction and distance to it.  First one to touch the head is “it” and gets to wear the head while everyone else chases them.  Catch up to the person that’s “it” and the head gets transferred to you.  The longer you wear the big giant head, the more points you build up.  Tag matches are timed and once the timer runs out, whoever wore the head longest wins.  The key to being successful at Tag is the skill with which you control your ride.  If you can pick the right route to climb the hills and time your jumps well, you can stay far enough away from everyone else to never lose the head.  This mode is tons of frantic fun, as you quickly go from being the hunter to the hunted, and then back again.

THQ and Rainbow Studios have really hit their stride with the MX vs. ATV franchise.  Not only have they managed to address every minor issue that plagued previous incarnations of the series, the addition of persistent terrain deformation and Reflex rider control absolutely take this game to the next level.  Racing fans of any genre should take a look at this title – and for fans of off-road racing, you’ve got a new game to feed your addiction!

Gaming Trend Score

92

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 85
4. Gameplay: 95
5. Value/Replay: 95
6. OVERALL:92