Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

Take a muddy ride back to the winter of 2001 with me for a moment. ATV Offroad Fury lands onto the PS2 to mixed reviews. I swing into my local Blockbuster, rent it and take it for a spin. I enjoyed the arcade gameplay alongside the high-flying jumps but in the end, the vicious rubber band AI shot me down. After a few days of heavy playing, I walked into Blockbuster and handed it to some kid over the counter.

A week or so later, I get a letter in the mail from Blockbuster claiming I owe them somewhere around $60 for my unreturned rental of ATV Offroad Fury. Hilarity ensued and I sadly paid my fine and signed off Blockbuster for years. Since then, the ATV Offroad series by Rainbow has held a special place in my heart. This time around with the series, I take ATV vs MX: Untamed for a spin on the PS3. While it’s comforting that Rainbow has abandoned their horrid, rubber-band AI from yesteryear, it’s definitely disconcerting to see that essentially, this is the same game I played in 2001.

Looks aren’t deceiving…

With gorgeous offroad titles like Motorstorm and Dirt screaming onto the PS3, it’s startling to see such low quality textures and overall visual performance in MX vs. ATV. MX vs. ATV can definitely be considered an ugly duckling. If the framerate was silky smooth, it might be some consolation but unfortunately when the screen is full of racers, the action gets a little choppy.

The audio is less than stellar as well. It seems Rainbow has been using the same engine rev clip from way back in 2001 and it really wouldn’t be a problem if the soundtrack wasn’t almost completely forgettable. Bad racing soundtracks are nothing new, most games fall victim to it but in the end, you’ll probably want to turn all the audio off before you’re done with MX vs. ATV.

Fat and Happy

It would be a disservice for me to sit back and say that MX vs. ATV is a bad game. In reality, it’s a perfectly adequate offroad racing game with tons of variety for offroad racing fans. The Single Player mode alone offers:

ÔÉò Free Ride (open exploration)
ÔÉò National(outdoor, lap-based racing courses)
ÔÉò Supercross (Ultra-technical races)
ÔÉò Freestyle (tricks-in-succession race)
ÔÉò Opencross (multi-class vehicle races)
ÔÉò Supermotos (MX vs. ATV vs. Trophy Trucks)
ÔÉò Endurocross (Slow, methodical MX racing)
ÔÉò Waypoint
ÔÉò Minimoto (Minibikes!) game modes to choose from.

All of the game modes above are available for you to try in either 2-player split-screen, 8-System LAN play or 8-player multiplayer via the Playstation Network. Mini-games are available as well, although the only notable entry here is Snake, a tron-like game mode that draws a trail behind your bike, cutting off your opponents.

Hello….Is Anybody Out There?

The online play is disappointing, to say the least. In the weeks of attempting to play this online, I was never able to get a full room of eight combatants to compete against. There is also a complete lack of any voice chat in Untamed, which is inexcusable this late in the current generation.

Picking up Untamed should really be considered if you A) Have a lot of friends with the game or B) Plan to only play offline. There weren’t many people playing online as of this writing, which is a bad sign for the title.

The Low Down

Overall, the gameplay in MX vs. ATV: Untamed is standard racing fare with racing that gets pretty repetitive and downright boring over time. Even with the unexpected elements introduced by human players online did little to spice up the drone of engine noise. You might think zipping around a track on a mini-bike sounds like fun but honestly, it isn’t.

While the vehicles in Untamed handle and control in the arcadey goodness Rainbow Studios fans will love, none of them do much to really set this title above the competition. In the end, it sits slightly below simliar titles on the console and can only truly be recommended as a purchase in the bargain bin.