Sunday Muddy Sunday
MX vs. ATV Reflex gives the franchise a much-needed injection of freshness, but is it enough?
Published: December 18, 2009
It's not as if there isn't a lot of variety to be had there, though. The MX vs. ATV series has quickly outgrown the two rides mentioned in the title. Likewise, you aren't just confined to indoor circuits (which is arguably where the game looks best, but I'll get to that in a second) or left to wander barren outdoor areas; plenty of waypoint races that have you hauling ass across varied terrain or omnicross events that mix up big jumps and trick opportunities with traditional whoops and rhythm-regulated jumps, and given the breadth of vehicle types that can take each of these courses and areas differently, there's a lot of different ways to play in the same places. The only real area I felt didn't properly handle itself was in the trick competitions where the scoring would sometimes ignore some of your tricks (which are rather difficult to pull off, let alone string together while nailing a jump at the right angle and with enough pre-loading).
Regardless of what you're driving, though, the game is a bit inconsistent in how it handles displaying it all. The roar of a crowd and introduction to stadium events is absolutely thrilling; there's a sense of scale and atmosphere that I've never really felt in a game like this before, but once the gate drops or you start to tool around in the open environments, some of the game's visual presentation starts to seriously crumble. Detail textures are drawn in amazingly close, leaving much of the medium- and long-range terrain a mottled, smeared mess. The framerate can bog down when in the middle of a pack and pop-in while out in the wilderness is both jarring and unavoidable. The return of a sort of loading screen playground where you're dropped into a smallish course to ride around while the event proper loads in the background is neat, but still suffers from the same visual hiccups.
Aurally, things are a little more consistent; vehicle sounds are throaty and varied (it's rare you'll hear an engine ramp up fully before it's interrupted by a bump or redlining bit after soaring off a jump) and the reactions are as snappy as they should be. The hilarious agro-rock soundtrack may not be, but if you're into off-roading events you've likely long since decided whether or not you can handle that sort of thing. It's definitely par for the course, though a custom soundtrack option would have been nice.
Rainbow's multiplayer offerings have long been one of the most entertaining parts of their games and most of the usual stuff you'd expect returns here. Yes, you can do the normal competition stuff you'd find offline, but jumping online to play a game of Tag or Snake (yes, the 3D game of Tron lightcycles-style trail dropping has returned) is where the game's real head-to-head (to head... to head to head all the way up to an extra 11 heads) enjoyment lies. The vertical nature of Snake's trails really does change how you think about laying down a trail behind you and eliminating other riders, and it's been a blast since Rainbow introduced it.
MX vs. ATV Reflex is without question a positive change for the series, it's just that the actual implementation of the physics and new controls are in dire need of evening out. There's simply too much in the way of unpredictability to ever feel like you have a complete handle on the vehicles. I can understand that the real-life aspect of riding -- particularly with only two wheels -- introduces plenty of random bumps and tweaks, but it's doubtful most gamers would know how to handle those in real life much less a game that seemingly enjoys heaping them on at the worst possible moment.
At no point would I ever call Reflex a bad game, but it's certainly more of a proof of concept. When things do click, they're heavenly, but those moments are fleeting at best, and the majority of the experience is simply too frustrating to recommend to everyone. For those that have a high tolerance for random bails and the willingness to spend a few hours really coming to terms with the controls, there's an immense sense of reward when a race goes "right." Just be ready for plenty to go wrong first before that happens.
