This game simply isn’t finished. Even after the first post-release patch, there remain fundamental flaws that prevent players from having a good time. This is a shame, as MX vs ATV Legends has some interesting ideas, an open world area, three distinct vehicle types and a vast single-player career.
This is the seventh title in the long-running MX vs ATV series, that started life after combining THQ’s MX games with Sony’s ATV Offroad Fury titles. It features motocross – off-road motorcycle racing, or ‘MX’ – along with all-terrain vehicles, also known as quad bikes.
Tales marks a good all-new ground-up approach, following 2018’s MX vs ATV All Out, which was met with a largely lukewarm response, to say the least.
Created by Rainbow Studios, the aim is for you to become a champion across multiple disciplines. There’s the aforementioned MX and ATV, but also UTV – an Utility Task Vehicle is a four-wheeled rough-road car of sorts, also known as a side-by-side, as it can seat more than one person.
For most of your time within the fictionalised setting, you are racing against AI-controlled rivals with one simple aim: score the most points over a series associated with races.
Yet the main pull will be an open environment, where you can learn, explore, take part in optional activities or unlock collectables. The free ride areas are lush, detailed and sadly, largely a bit pointless.
It serves as your own place to complete the tutorials and in-between races you can interact – a static character with on-screen text – along with personalities that provide you with new motorcycle parts plus well, that’s mostly this.
You don’t ride up in order to or discover your next career events, for example. They are accessed by the pause menu, which robs the particular game of vital flow. Simply selecting your following main race from a list just doesn’t have the same allure because finding it within the mountainous region.
When you load up a race, however, the track design has been turned up to 11. There are jumps and then there are MX vs ATV Legends ’ leaps. Vast chasms that really amp up the peril.
To execute a landing, you must first leap far enough and to do that pre-loading your rider by pulling back on the analogue sticks is essential. That can lead to a lot of frustration at first, as without a rewind system such since that in contemporary rival Monster Energy Supercross 5 , for example, learning each bump, rut and crest of these new tracks can be a challenge.
What compounds the issue is that the particular game takes an age to reset your bike and driver, to the point where your rivals look to respawn quicker compared to you. You can manually re-launch, by holding down a button for a few seconds, so you find yourself almost pre-emptively resetting as you know your trajectory is about in order to end in a faceplant.
When you do smash your bike plus rider into the ground, the ragdoll physics are the bit awry, sometimes jittering. It’s neither authentic, nor over-the-top silly, but this strange immersion-breaking middle ground.
Still, at least you can restart a career event, and after a lap or even two of working out where you need to pre-load and where to go slow, that is the best option. Although it must end up being said, this is only really an issue with the particular bikes, as the AI programming is usually wildly inconsistent. On exactly the same difficulty level, you can struggle on two wheels, then boss it upon four.
While you may struggle to learn the ropes on the MX races, the circuits are at least diversified, through small, tricky, mud-based venues to vast open sandy affairs. In fact, the environment design, from the set tracks to the particular free ride environments is definitely this game’s forte – the latter far ahead of other motocross titles’ attempts at large areas.
Strange, then, that the alluring surface design and the vehicles aren’t interacting in the correct fashion at present. Somehow, the physics program makes it feel as if you are skating over the top associated with the floor, as opposed to the particular tyres gripping or sinking into it. Even on a supposedly muddy track, the automobiles act as in case it’s rock solid, with the suspension animations of a good ATV really highlighting how terra firma, tyres and suspension systems are not communicating.
Berms don’t seem to affect your own bike either. You simply bounce over and around them, while opposed in order to using them to gain corner speed. Milestone’s MXGP 2021 is far more fluid, as well as the track character changes how your take each part. Ultimately, that’s a more satisfying riding experience.
The UTVs are better. Unfortunately, most of the opening hours will be on two tires and not four and the game crashes hard currently when you select a side-by-side within the open-world environment and pre-patch if a person tried to enter their career events.
But even here, the vehicle impacts – plus you’ll have more thanks to the UTV’s extra girth and large grids – lack solidity as if they weigh less than the packet of Quavers crisps. The somewhat flawed Overpass from 2020 had a lot more rewarding physics for UTV driving.
On a motocross machine, your rider can be more rigid than a Madame Tussauds waxwork. They don’t seem to move, lean or react in order to bumps within a linear fashion. The arm animation for applying the clutch, for instance, seems to act like an on-off switch, as opposed to 1 humanistic motion.
Simply, you may have a long career mode and varied topography, and heck even some glitches, bugs plus game crashes – but the underlying riding and driving experience needs to be rewarding, and I don’t think it is.
Perhaps you look at the yearly Milestone-created MXGP and Supercross dirt bicycle games and see how these people add just minimal features each year, with regard to the majority of part, and are after a fresh experience.
In that will respect, MX vs ATV Legends is not quite what you have been seeking. The particular comparison is particularly pertinent when you consider the game’s first set of paid downloadable content is the officially licenced 2022 AMA Pro Motocross Championship regarding £15. 99/$19. 99.
The profession progression is certainly decidedly bland too, simply one race after another. You are able to upgrade your machinery, but it’s not clear enough if you need to. Buying new parts does not add more performance, but tuning those parts does, which seems an unnecessary extra step especially considering you must unlock tuning levels.
The baseline statistics of the unlicenced vehicle line-up all appear to be identical before upgrades, thus robbing the particular incentive to save up cash and buy a new one and industry-standard functions such as a photo mode or even replays are usually both absent.
There is local split-screen multiplayer, however , but the online race seems to be barren already along with us not being able to join a PC lobby since launch.
This brings us back to the fun element. Playing games that aren’t simulators is meant to become a flight of fancy, a break from your norm. When the physics aren’t satisfying, as well as the career is this ponderous, MX versus ATV Legends simply isn’t smile-inducing sufficient.
The series has a long and storied history with many loyal fans, plus it’s a shame that I don’t think they have a brand new entry that’s deserving of their fandom. Range Studios also made Monster Jam Steel Titans 2 just last year (interestingly structured in the particular same way, merging big environments and separate arenas) and am can’t help yet feel that Tales needed additional resources plus another year of polish before it was released.
There are some of the best songs seen in motocross racing right here and I like the game’s scope but the particular lack of driving and traveling finesse leaves a nasty aftertaste and it is this many basic of a requirement that holds it back.
| Developer | Rainbow Studios |
| Release date | 28th June 2022 |
| Available platforms | PC, PlayStation 4, Ps 5, Xbox One plus Xbox Series X|S |
| Version tested | PC |
| Best played with | Gamepad |
Full disclosure: A code for the game was provided by the particular publisher intended for review purposes. Here is our evaluation policy .
