We'll admit it; we're softies when it comes to motocross racing, especially when it involves pitting bikes against quads (and every other garden variety of off-road racer, for that matter), and we've been having our way with MX vs. ATV Untamed ever since we sank our claws into the preview code a month or so ago. In the first entry onto HD-era platforms for the franchise, Rainbow Studios has delivered a competent, good-looking and varied racer in Untamed that has all the crucial ingredients for making a motocross and offroad racer great --a hyper-fast sense of speed, lots of sweet tricks and a realistic physics engine to run it all on.
The result is great offline and online play and, barring a few minor quibbles, Untamed delivers breakneck racing and high flying trickery that's as intense as its current brunette vs. blonde ad spot is hot. On that count, for the record, kissing beats out hugs by a long shot. We spent nearly an equal amount of time with the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Untamed, and they both play almost identically, though the PS3 beats the 360 on load times. Thankfully, load times are more bearable on both systems thanks to an innovative new practice hangar that lets you tear around while you wait, which is one of many details Rainbow nails to make Untamed soar.
Whip It Good
In our last preview, we covered the main events in detail. Since then, not much has really changed in the retail build. The Quick Events and Custom Events are fun ways to get acclimated to the tracks and racing styles in the nine available series: Free-Ride, National, Supercross, Freestyle, Opencross, Supermoto, Endurocross, Waypoint and Minimoto. Since the guys at Rainbow really pride themselves on re-creating the "go big" feel of trick-centric motocross, you'll really want to master the finer points of pulling off the new analog-driven tricks, as we have.
Starting with whips, after a good preload, you can let your momentum 'swap' your bike out to the side (just like the old flatliner tricks) controlling the yaw with the left analog stick for killer full-horizontal whips. Same thing goes for scrubs and flips, all of which perform really well with the analog interface. Because each extension and landing is controlled by your analog input and not a button combo, you can really start to develop a style all your own that looks and feels totally different than the button-mapped tricks, though the button controlled tricks are great too.
From that point, we divided our time spent with Untamed between winning the X-Cross tournament and some good online play. Working through the preliminary events and unlocking the 9 or so races on the way to the big race isn't too tough and while there are times when it gets a bit repetitive (there are only five events in the tourney), it's not long to the point that it ever feels like you'll want to turn it off and move on to something else.