Untamed had a chance to shine, but fumbled in the spot light of modern racers.
GAMEPLAY
If you are familiar with the controls that have been the same for the last 7 or so years with this series, you know what to expect. Rev up your vehicle of choice, take corners cautiously, be wary of ruthless Ai opponents, and pull off a few tricks. Having a wide selection of dirt bikes and ATV's is very nice, but things get real interesting when you throw trophy trucks, monster trucks, and buggies into the mix. Unable to perform tricks with the four-wheeled rides makes sense, but you can easily make up for that by having size and dominant race tactics. That doesn't imply any fair play will take place, simply because you'll recieve very little from Ai and human players alike, so to each his own. Racing through the various modes is always refreshing, because there is tons of places to traffic. Outdoor and indoor events, mixed vehicle races, tourney's, trick bouts, and freeride mode. What makes freeride so welcoming is you simply zip around whatever place you delight with no pressure. As for Untamed's official tourney that utilizes every vehicle and requires certain qualifications to progress, the learning curve becomes extremely steep. If you never played this racing series, prepare for some serious frustration because the physics system can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. Controlling the larger vehicles is bearable, but something about landing jumps with the MX's and ATV's is more difficult than previous versions have ever been, rookie or veteran.
VISUALS
What tears me up most about this area of the game is the tug of war match the graphics and physics engine have. From a player who has seen this series evolve, its hard to say the new game introduces anything worth bragging about in this department. Sunsets and particle effects are decent, but you hardly ever have a moment to appreciate them while ripping through courses. If you can take a moment to admire the numerous locals, you will quickly notice the level design is not in favor of anything non-race related. Sounds petty, but the course designs do their job. Everything else like buildings and environment details come off very dated looking. What the old games lacked were solid physics, but the visuals were top notch for its time. Now with Untamed, you have highly detailed physics that almost come off as unfair compared to dated graphics.
AUDIO
I hope you have a MP3 player or a boom box in the room, because the menu and race music to Untamed is atrocious! Besides my silly warning of tasteless music, the game is left in time when speaking on the behalf of sound effects. Vehicles solely geared up for shredding through mounds of dirt are loud no doubt, and sometimes overly monotonous. If you've never heard it in person, expect to hate the sounds after playing a few hours of Untamed. Crashing dudes into objects and hearing them crunch is decent, but nothing ever jolts you with a serious punch. The shifting of gears and sense of speed are hardly present in audio, so if you choose to mute this one for a few races, I wouldn't blame you one bit.
EXTRAS
Before I nag about how tedious it is to race endless hours for 10 point achievements, let it be known, Untamed is not for the casual race fan. I picked this game up as a FAN and quickly found the desire to look elsewhere for my speed fix. Advancing through the game with no way to improve vehicle performance compared to the large selection of useless vehicle cosmetics, especially with the ever increasing Ai, I'm appalled! With hardly anyone online racing on a regular basis, just participating with others will come off as a chore. Once in game, there is no major rules or point system to judge who is racing well or fair for that matter. So if you continue to see the same name taunting you with crushing blows from his monster truck, get acquainted or get offline. A majority of the unlockables in this game are meant for the hardcore, so enjoy the main tourney and the 300 or so points it has to offer. Past that, everything else requires perfect racing that scores gold medals, freeride collectibles scattered about, and a few online rank wins.
OVERALL
MX vs. ATV Untamed was a tough choice for me as a fan, especially with so many other interesting race titles available. I imagine the same difficult discussion came up when the original developer, Rainbow Studios, debated if they should change the formula or try something different. After playing numerous hours of said game, its obvious they had no intention of doing anything different with this series. In a way, being a fan who wanted to this game to shine so badly in a area of the videogame racing world so neglected, I appreciate the effort. As a gamer who spent money on something that should have been more new rather than old, I'm sorely disappointed. Online gameplay could have been much more, but that would have required a different game all together. Since Untamed decided to stay familiar with fans of the past in a genre constantly evolving, its cheerished memories of good times will remain in that exact place, the past.