Sensational game for those who love the sport of motocross
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
score:6.5
The games weak point is definitely within its graphics and sound.
The detail of ruts and burms and the texture of the mud, clay and sand look great but from time to time there will be graphical inconsistencies and with some things looking great and some being OK it tends to stand out. If you have played a mx vs atv game you know what to expect of the sound. The soundtrack tends to be mostly punk and of course nickleback someone at rainbow studios likes nickleback waaayyyy too much. If you are a fan of the games you will also realize by now that the last two mx vs atv tends to take songs from need for speed games...... 2 strokes also sound hell hack on this game dont know why they changed it the sounds could have been ripped of mx vs atv unleashed and i would have been happy
GAMEPLAY
THE FREESTYLE:9
That has been completely changed for you freestyle fanatics and now rock solids look identical to those of Kenny bartram's and the 9 0 clock nac indy looks identical to those of pastranas. No game has a better looking set of trick animations than this game..........pure doesnt even come close. The learning curve for freestyle is the steepest and tends to annoy people. Simple tricks like heelclickers and no footed cans are easy to pull but people tend to struggle with the rotation of the backflip and also with backflip combinations/360's. The mechanics are perfect and it really tends to stay true to freestyle by allowing the backflip to be something that is extremely easy to do on one jump but to try and flip the 3 sets of jumps on copper valley with all backflip variations can be rather hard. The mechanics also allow a great degree of flexibility which i love. for example the ''scrub'' feature in this game allows you to also whip the bike. In terms of freestyle you can do some cool things like getting flatspin and bmx style 360's if you whip and 360 at the same time and also underflips are also possible(ridiculously hard) if you scrub and then backflip. For freestyle fans you can really re create great moments in the sport of FMX like backflip rulers,cliffhanger flips, double backflips and body varials, a lot of things that have been done in the sport can be done on this game and it can also be done in a way that is both fun and also most importantly feels true to real fans of the sport so in order that your lay z boy backlips look identical to the ones that pastrana does and none of your tricks look unrealistic.
There could have been more tricks because there are a few they missed out on but pretty much everything is covered here.
RACING :8
If you are not a fan of freestyle you probably scrolled straight to this point. Racing in this game also has a steep learning curve this game is a off road simulator and in real life if you case a 70 foot triple theres no hope for you and this game really implies the fact to try and be as realistic as possible that combined with new gameplay mechanics has frustrated so many people with this game to the point where instead of trying they just say "this game is broken". The motocross courses are waaayyyy better than what i expected to be honest gladly(true fans) there are no more dinosaurs aztec ruins waterfalls on courses there is absolutely none of that. The outdoor courses consist of dream like courses set in all the enviroments you see in crusty movies and so on. They tend to also stay true enough that a nationals fan can really enjoy it. Supercross is also just not as good but its still fairly solid. Colombus has the WORST visuals on this game if you look at the sky it is rendered so horribly it lacks the replayabity of that individual level. Willford and Harris park look like amazing tracks with the lighting being up to great standards. The AI in racing will like in most MX games willl make you want to go and smash your controller in a thousand peices for example if you dont pick the inside at kittery point you are almost always guaranteed to crash trying to get the hole shot.
THE OTHERS..........:6
Consisting of monster trucks and trophy trucks and other off road vehicles most fans of mx would probably steer clear of these. They tend to handle in a rather realistic manner although the exception is being able to backflip your car, the opencross and waypoint races tend to be the lowest point of this game due to rather long laps and repetitiveness. If you have 1000/1000 you will most likely never want to touch another trophy truck ever again. But of coarse if you are a fan of offroad cars this can also tend to be fair fun just not in large doses.
REPLAYABILITY:9.5
If its a sport you are passionate about nothing will keep you away from this game every time you watch a race or a freestyle run you will want to go have a hot lap or try to re animate nate's dew tour runs. The game also has deep customization with being able to pick the colour of your bike and also the build. Even though Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and KTM arent actually in the game. They just put the team sticker kits in anyway which saves them money and allows us to have some kinda of customization. The riders are also deeply customizable with large amounts of gear you can easily re create yourself or you can recreate a professional who isnt in the game *cough* PASTRANA *cough*.
The game is easily the best in the series and is also the greatest motocross game i have ever played. It isn't to say it is perfect frustrating AI bad sounds and a terrible career layout tends to keep this game being perfect. If a better layout of your riders career existed it would make this game a lot more addictive. For example if instead of choosing an event series you choose a profession and then you race and build yourself from the ground up MTX mototrax is a great example of this and is definitely has the most addictive career play i have ever played.
The bottom line is if you are a motocross fan and you ride and you loved the previous titles you will be a lot more appreciative of this game and the changes that are subtle to some will be dramatic to you and ALL of these changes are for the better and they simply enhance your motocross gaming experience.