Lawrence.com

There's no shortage of off-road racing games out on the market today. There is, however, a shortage of off-road games that feature biplanes and golf carts. After years and years of angry emails from golf cart fanatics, THQ has finally answered their prayers. Sarcasm aside, MX vs ATV Unleashed is a decent game for fans of the genre, and will certainly give them plenty to do.

The best aspect of the game is certainly the sheer variety of activities you can participate in. The primary single-player mode is the Championships. These championships last for 16 weeks, and you have to race twice (on the same track) each week. You'll unlock store points which can be spent on a variety of helmets, jerseys, and vehicles. Unfortunately, the available customization of your character is fairly bare-boned. You can change your racers' outfit, but there's really no stat-building system such as in the SSX series.

Outside of this Championship mode, there is also Freestyle, Hill Climb, Supermoto, and multiple other options. The most fun modes are certainly the races, and were clearly the main focus of the games' development. Hill Climb is especially useless, as it's basically a 10-second race up a hill. I played about 15 rounds of this in 2-player mode before I realized that's all Hill Climb had to offer.

Many items are unlockable, both as rewards and store purchases. Numerous rewards can be found throughout the games' 40+ challenges, which will appear throughout the Championship. For instance, I was challenged to a helicopter race through 12 checkpoints (which naturally unlocked the helicopter). These challenges are a good addition to break up some of the monotony of the Championship.

There is a huge amount of tracks, but they all look pretty similar. The non-arena tracks generally fall into one of three locales: desert, rural, or mountains. While there may be many different desert tracks, they're nearly indistinguishable from each other. The graphics on these courses as a whole are pretty uninteresting, and by no means show off the power of the Xbox. Pop-up is a constant problem, especially on courses with trees. If you take the time to look at the horizon while you're racing, you'll notice dozens of trees magically appearing out of nowhere.

MX vs ATV features the most atrocious soundtrack I've heard since Burnout 3. Abysmal bands like Papa Roach and Nickelback riddle the soundtrack, and by no means fit the gameplay. Unless you're an angry eighth grader who's mad at your dad, you'll probably hate almost all the songs featured. If you happen to like good music, the game features customizable soundtracks. I found the game to be exponentially more enjoyable with the addition of some Creedence Clearwater, Led Zeppelin, and ZZ Top (far more fitting bands for this type of game).

It's hard to really write about sound effects in this game, because they're extremely sparse. Engine sounds and the occasional crowd are literally almost the only things you'll hear. The engines do sound appropriate, though.

Graphics and audio problems aside, the game is actually fairly fun to play. You'll find yourself racing more than anything else, and the controls are pretty responsive. It's certainly not a complicated control scheme (A to accelerate, X to brake, B and Y for stunts), but it works. I found that during races, it's best not to do stunts, as they generally just make you crash and lose your place. Most all stunts are used in the Freestyle mode, which is not quite as polished as the racing. Stunts are far too hard to land, and there's not much variety. One of the biggest problems with the tricks is that you don't know how long it will take to pull them off. In games like SSX, you knew you could land Level 1 tricks on small jumps, while you should save higher-level tricks for huge jumps that you have a lot of time on. With MX vs ATV, the Right+Y trick could be pulled off in no time at all, while the Up+Y trick takes forever. This really makes trick selection a guess-and-check routine, and that's not good.

Many vehicle types are featured: MX, ATV, Sandrail, Buggy, Monster Truck, Trophy Truck, Plane, Heli, and Golf Cart. It seems like the game was programmed for MX's and (to a lesser extent) ATVs, as the majority of the other vehicles control fairly terribly. Airplanes and Helicopters control especially awfully, and seem like rejects from GTA: San Andreas. The MX is easily the best vehicle in the game, and the physics and controls are great. As always in these games, the crashes are pretty hilarious.

As long as you stick with MX's and racing, you'll find this game a decent distraction (especially for fans of the genre). Stumble into some of the other modes and vehicles, however, and the flaws of this game will stand out a little more.

Graphics: B-

Sound: D+

First Play: B

Last Play: C

Gameplay: C+

Overall: 78% C+