ATV Offroad Fury 4
Climax’s final PS2 ATV game is good, but not great.
Published: December 18, 2006
If you haven’t heard by now, the ATV Offroad Fury franchise is either blessed or cursed, depending on what perspective you see things from. Originally created by the masters of offroad racing, Rainbow Studios, the game nailed, right from the start, the feeling of catching air and timing jumps to propel yourself into the lead on a track. “Rhythm racing,” they called it, and it was very, very good. Now comes the whole curse/blessing thing.
Rainbow knocked out two games in the series before they were gobbled up by THQ, effectively ending their run on the series. With hardly anyone else in the biz working on ATV games, Sony Computer Entertainment America scouted the next obvious choice: Climax Racing. Climax went on to bust two more ATV games, the solid-if-unremarkable ATV Offroad Fury 3 and the remarkably-un-solid ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin’ Trails before news that they would be swallowed up by Buena Vista Games arrived.
It’s great news for whatever developer happens to be working on the franchise (provided buyouts are good news to anyone at the dev house), but for Sony it creates a bad position to be in. Twice the game have reached their stride and twice the development studio meant to carry the franchise on has had to drop things. Luckily, with the final two games, the insanely loaded ATV Offroad Fury Pro on PSP and this here ATV Offroad Fury 4 I’m reviewing, Climax is going out with the bang. Or a vroom, whichever suits you.
I’ve already gushed over the job Climax did in resuscitating the ATV franchise on the PSP, and you’re more than welcome to check it out by clicking right here, but in the interest of highlighting the fact that the two games share a ton of content, I’ll recap some of the highlights. Using a USB cable, the two versions of the franchise have tons of crosstalk options; vehicles and tracks (even user-created ones) can be shared or uploaded, and both versions use the same leaderboards and forums for community interaction. It really is the best example of the PSP/PS2 crosstalk that has been seen so far, and it’s my hope that we see more with the PS3, even if the hardware disparity is much more of a gulf with the whole next-gen… thing.
But yeah, about that PS2 version. It feels very much like Climax wanted to treat this as a proper swan song, not only for their involvement in the franchise, but for the franchise proper on the PS2. It’s entirely likely that if Sony does find a new development team (can we pray it’s MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios), the game will be continued on the PS3, so this is a rather bulky – if slightly less satisfying – send-off for the franchise on the PS2. Best of all, Climax has succeeded in making an ATV game that is a marked departure from Rainbow’s original concept, yet still manages to be just as fun.
Biting equal style off Rainbow’s own MX Unleashed and Codemasters’ Race Driver games, the vehicle types have been bumped up, and now include buggies and trucks to complement the bikes and ATVs (though no snowmobiles like the PSP version, and certainly nothing as crazy as planes like Rainbow’s last game – and that’s a good thing) and a storyline has been added to link the races together. The storyline is not only painful to watch and listen to thanks to horribly rough voice acting, dialogue and pre-rendered “sets,” but really serves no purpose other than to give your male or female rider an excuse to go traipsing about the planet in competitions.
Rainbow knocked out two games in the series before they were gobbled up by THQ, effectively ending their run on the series. With hardly anyone else in the biz working on ATV games, Sony Computer Entertainment America scouted the next obvious choice: Climax Racing. Climax went on to bust two more ATV games, the solid-if-unremarkable ATV Offroad Fury 3 and the remarkably-un-solid ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin’ Trails before news that they would be swallowed up by Buena Vista Games arrived.
It’s great news for whatever developer happens to be working on the franchise (provided buyouts are good news to anyone at the dev house), but for Sony it creates a bad position to be in. Twice the game have reached their stride and twice the development studio meant to carry the franchise on has had to drop things. Luckily, with the final two games, the insanely loaded ATV Offroad Fury Pro on PSP and this here ATV Offroad Fury 4 I’m reviewing, Climax is going out with the bang. Or a vroom, whichever suits you.
I’ve already gushed over the job Climax did in resuscitating the ATV franchise on the PSP, and you’re more than welcome to check it out by clicking right here, but in the interest of highlighting the fact that the two games share a ton of content, I’ll recap some of the highlights. Using a USB cable, the two versions of the franchise have tons of crosstalk options; vehicles and tracks (even user-created ones) can be shared or uploaded, and both versions use the same leaderboards and forums for community interaction. It really is the best example of the PSP/PS2 crosstalk that has been seen so far, and it’s my hope that we see more with the PS3, even if the hardware disparity is much more of a gulf with the whole next-gen… thing.
But yeah, about that PS2 version. It feels very much like Climax wanted to treat this as a proper swan song, not only for their involvement in the franchise, but for the franchise proper on the PS2. It’s entirely likely that if Sony does find a new development team (can we pray it’s MotorStorm developer Evolution Studios), the game will be continued on the PS3, so this is a rather bulky – if slightly less satisfying – send-off for the franchise on the PS2. Best of all, Climax has succeeded in making an ATV game that is a marked departure from Rainbow’s original concept, yet still manages to be just as fun.
Biting equal style off Rainbow’s own MX Unleashed and Codemasters’ Race Driver games, the vehicle types have been bumped up, and now include buggies and trucks to complement the bikes and ATVs (though no snowmobiles like the PSP version, and certainly nothing as crazy as planes like Rainbow’s last game – and that’s a good thing) and a storyline has been added to link the races together. The storyline is not only painful to watch and listen to thanks to horribly rough voice acting, dialogue and pre-rendered “sets,” but really serves no purpose other than to give your male or female rider an excuse to go traipsing about the planet in competitions.