MX Vs ATV Supercross Review

For many people, MX vs ATV Reflex - which was first released in 2009 - is still one of the finest off-road racing games ever made. Even the wafer-thin 2011 sequel MX vs ATV Alive didn't do enough wrong to kill that goodwill, and there remains a surprisingly sizeable fanbase who are rabidly anticipating this latest iteration. Sadly, it's difficult to imagine any one of those people feeling happy (or even remotely satisfied) with MX vs ATV Supercross. 

 

Never before has a console product launched at retail feeling more like a free-to-play shell than this does. The series' brilliant Rider Reflex system doesn't even exist any more: rather than using the right stick to shift your rider's body movement to nail perfect corners (and dodge your opponents without losing speed) now all you're doing is using the right stick to perfect a smooth landing. All of the series' complexity has gone. This now feels like every other two-bit, two-wheeled racing game. 

 

Supercross' centrepiece is called Career Mode, but it isn't a career mode at all; it's just a series of identikit races that each unlock trifling customisible elements. There's no sense of progression whatsoever: you play eight races (or so) in each area, and then you move on. It's a few lists containing a few races to participate in, that all look exactly the same. Most (if not all) of the people who worked on this game wouldn't be able to tell a Los Angeles track from a Denver one. Every single course is just way too long and way, way too brown.

 

The game can't even create the illusion of being an actual race either. Jostling AI riders will suddenly speed up before crashing into barriers like idiots, while others manage to maintain a degree of furious speed for 80% of the race that is just downright impossible. "How is that racer going so much faster than me?" you'll ask yourself, before he slows down to a crawl on the final lap, allowing you to pass him by with consummate ease. What drama! 

 

What would have made this execrable "career" mode a little sweeter would have been if you could have done it in local co-op. There actually is local co-op here, but you're only able to do a load of single races on the bounce that have no relation to one another. To include a co-op career mode would have been a flippant (and basically meaningless) gesture, but it also would have taken this game's creators an afternoon to implement at the very most. 

 

There are no tutorials which seems a little mad at first, until you realise how utterly simplistic the gameplay is. Nobody needs to learn anything: you've almost certainly played a game like this before, and even if you haven't, you'll probably grasp it (master it, even) in less than ten tedious minutes. The mundanity of the structure, the environments and the customisable elements genuinely make this feel like an aggressive freebie, and not even MX vs ATV Alive quite felt like that, even though that's basically what it was… even though it also involved cash up front. There are microtransactions here too, surprise surprise, and they don't add anything particularly significant. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is impossible to gauge, but they simply shouldn't be there.

 

This is a simplistic and empty enterprise that probably should have been free, and is a slap in the face to fans of MX vs ATV Reflex, which was a terrific thing of beauty. There's an ongoing campaign to get the Reflex servers turned back on, and fans are advised to keep that going until someone at Rainbow Studios finally buckles. This one is no substitute.

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4/10