An enjoyable game. If you enjoy having an ATV landing on you.
ATV Offroad Fury is a little misleading. With the word “offroad” one would assume you can go off the tracks. However the game goes out of its way to penalize you when you try to cut corners or take shortcuts and the game would bring you back to where you went off track after a few seconds. This is really disappointing since one would expect to find some “offroad” shortcuts. These rules apply to most of the game modes. The modes are Maxxis Nationals, Stadium Supercross, Cross County Enduro and Freestyle competition. These are fancy names which mean racing outdoor tracks, racing in a stadium tracks, racing in open outdoor areas and doing tricks in open outdoor areas. While the Cross county Enduro has more leeway in terms of offroad racing, you drive through gates to complete laps. But the way the gates are set in the area show clearly the fastest way to the next gate so that any exploration will almost always hurt your time. All these plus a pro career mode, which is basically racing on all the tracks and if you don’t place high enough, you have to redo the track.
The game has one major component, the pre-load meter. When you reach the bottom of a hill or jump, pull back on the left analog stick then release. Depending on where on the hill you released determines how high your ATV will be launched. If you release right at the top of the hill you jump at your maximum height off the hill. This feature is so crucial because the tracks are filled with tons of hills and bumps. Controlling the height of your jumps will determine how fast you can get around the track. Jump too high and not only will you lose speed but you increase the risk of landing on obstacles, jump too short and you might not make it over the consecutive hills and lose speed climbing them. This basically translates to track memorization to have decent success, especially in the indoor tracks. The game becomes more tedious than thrilling or exciting. Other than that all you need is the left analog stick to steer and the x button for gas. Your ATV is remarkably maneuverable which makes turning corners a breeze.
The game has an arcade feel to it especially since each ATV seem to disregard gravity because you can get really REALLY big air. It is borderline impossible. Especially in one track which has you jumping off a cliff as a part of the track. As long as you position your ATV, level to the ground, you are immune to the effects of gravity and will not get knocked off your ATV.
There is a good variety of ATVs to choose from, 20 in all. However the game does not contain any system for customizing ATVs and thus a large percentage of available ATV variants are just color swaps. The statistically different ATVs have their own strength and weaknesses ex: excellent top speed but poor acceleration and visa versa. However, once you unlock the final ATV, which has exceptional stats in everything, which in turn causes every other ATV becomes obsolete. You can customize your rider a bit as well with 29 costumes and the choice of a male or female rider. Again, 29 costumes seems like a sizable amount of variety however a large amount of them are the also color swaps so in reality there is only 7-8 costumes.
Another game mechanic allows you to perform tricks mid-air. The longer you hold the trick the more points you rack up. It is almost identical to the trick system in the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games except in a severely striped down form. There are only 8 tricks available so there isn’t a lot of depth in the freestyle mode. Due to this lack of depth, the freestyle mode isn’t all that appealing especially since there are no other objectives other than to get a certain amount of points within a certain time period. This gets old real fast. And while you can pull off tricks during races, it serves no real purpose other than creating risks for poor landings.
The pro career mode is the bulk of the single player component. Completing the pro career mode will not take long; you can finish in a couple of sittings under the assumption that you win every race. You might be redoing some tracks due to the fact that the computer AI is very adept at getting their tires to make contact with the back of your head which in turn causes you to fly off your ATV. What makes this particular frustrating is that this occurs right before you cross the finish line which could instigate flying controllers.
Other than a length 25-30 second load up time for each track, the game runs smoothly with no slow down. The graphics while not being spectacular are not bad either. The rider and the ATVs are believable and are colored well. The landscapes do look unpolished and messy however this is only the case when you are not moving. Otherwise it is very difficult to notice. The game soundtrack holds 17 songs however they don’t seem to have a theme anywhere due to the large variety of songs. Chances are you’ll find yourself just listening to the same song over and over rather than listening to the whole playlist at once. As for in game sounds, they are believable. The ATVs sound as they should and the rider does grunt when they hit obstacles. However there are only 2 or so grunts and they sound very similar. Your rider will make the same noise whether he hits a tree or falls off a 1000 foot cliff. The game modes can be played with a second player, excluding pro career, which does lengthen the value of the game. You could blow through the pro career mode in 2 to 5 hours to unlock everything.
Overall the game provides an arcade racer with some good ideas but falls short of its goals.