by:	October 24, 2004

Written by : Phil

This was a great way to “start off” the 4-Wheeling collection soon to come for Xbox. It has just about everything an extreme sport gamer could possibly want – nice graphics, lots of un-lockables, tons of options, and even a short and sweet training mode to get you used to maneuvering your Quad Racer.

Graphics
I must say that everything is definitely in tune in the graphics department. Everything is very detailed, and it tends to look like a little bit of bump mapping may have been added to the Xbox version of the game, but I’m not positive. The graphics are smooth throughout the game, with nicely shaded pixels, and there aren’t too many pixels in one spot, causing them to smudge. One thing that I really enjoyed about this game is that they tried hard to make the surroundings look just as realistic as the 4-Wheeler, as well as the player models. The players were much more detailed than most racing games I have seen. One example is Need For Speed, where the guy has blurred detail. Another example could be Splashdown. Everything in Splashdown looked so nice – the water, the surroundings, etc., but the rider was just a cheap add-on. To summarize, the graphics are some of the best I have seen for extreme sports games. They add things like dust flying from the bottom of your tires on a dirt road, and even the skid marks from every time you needed to brake on that last turn.

Sound
Every sound I heard was realistic; it’s definitely worth crankin’ the volume on that surround sound system of yours. The great sound really kicks in when the motor shifts gears and when people yell or scream as they fall of their 4-Wheeler (either because you rammed into them, or you just decided to kick them off). All of the items on the level will also interact with you – when you peal out as the race starts, you will get to hear the screeching from your ATV and all the other racers’ ATVs piercing your ears (but in a good way). The music is pretty cool too, ranging from some hard rock to a few cool techno beats and what some may call “hip hop.” The only disappointing thing is that you can’t create custom sound tracks. Sorry guys, but it wasn’t my call!

Gameplay
When you first pop in the disc, try the ATV Academy. It teaches you some sweet and simple ways to play the game, and it will unlock two new ATV’s just for completing training – it’s as easy as that. Next, get serious with career mode. There are about 15 different tracks to try, every one getting you closer and closer to more unlocks. Next, there is Freestyle. I think we all know what that one is, but before you get too excited, you must know that there is only 1 course you can play in that mode, as far as I know. It’s likely, however, that there are some freestyle tracks that unlock as you go. Next on the list is Challenge mode (as seen in MX Superfly, but MUCH better). The challenges consist of courses, slaloms, and some other, really hard things to do! The other challenges you can try are the “tower” challenges. These are quite original and unique – I have never seen anything quite like this in a game before. The tower challenges require you and that trusty ATV of yours to climb up or down huge towers within a limited amount of time. Sounds easy, right? Guess again. These challenges are very hard, and can get quite frustrating. I find going down the tower much harder than going up, because of this little thing we like to call “gravity.” Another play option is “Time Trial;” I don’t think much needs to be said about that. Finally, there is 1-4 player multi-player and custom rider modes. The multi-player modes are: Single race, head to head, championship, and freestyle battle.

Control
There are just too many things to try to do at once in this game, because of all the wrong button placing. I find it hard to accelerate with the “A” Button, try to pull of a trick with the “X” button, and find time to get a bigger air while holding the “Y” button before I go off a jump. But as they say, practice makes perfect. The two very simple controls are the “A” button for gas, and the “B” button to kick the rider next to you off his ATV. Note: There are 3 different controller layouts you can choose from, but you cannot customize them.

Replay
Well, maybe there are 2 things wrong with the game. In addition to the control configuration issues, replay value isn’t too great. Once you beat it fully and get all the unlockable items, what else is there to do that will be much of a thrill other than multi-player? Kind of reminds me of Need For Speed in a way, because it’s high action racing, over and over again, until you save up and buy that big fast Diablo. It takes you such a long time to save up for that last car, and then you say to yourself, “Now what?”

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There really couldn’t have been much of a better way to start off the Xbox ATV collection than this game. It offers you hours and hours of constant gameplay that never seems to get old or repetitive. Once you beat it though, beware – this game doesn’t have too much depth after you unlock everything.

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