Developed by Rainbow Studios and published by THQ Nordic, MX vs ATV Legends is the brand-new title in the long-running offroad racing game franchise. Bringing back the action-packed offroad action, MX vs ATV Legends comes filled with plenty of new content and game design however, unfortunately, the game simply fails to deliver in the end. Having such a great record of solid releases in the past with their most recent title, Monster Jam Steel Titans 2, Rainbow Studios seems to have lost their touch for their latest title. This is our review of the Xbox Series X version of MX vs ATV Legends in which we slide around some dirt corners and eventually fall down in the mud.
MX vs ATV Legends kicks off with a small drive introducing you to the basics of the game followers by an open-world tutorial where you are free to roam around and complete the initial tutorial missions at your own pace. This is a good change of pace from navigating boring screens and you can explore your compound as well which is where you will spend your time while you are not out racing in various locations. The game offers an in-depth tutorial where it teaches you everything that you need to know about mastering the gameplay. You learn about controlling your bike around circuits, managing huge jumps and small jumps, camera controls, and more during these sessions. After you are done with the tutorial, you are free to jump into the main career of the game or try out the other modes.
There are plenty of things to do in MX vs ATV Legends which include both offline and online. The Career Mode spans over three different paths depending on the choice of vehicle you want to drive. You have a different career path for MX, ATV, and UTV however at the start of the game, you can only play the MX one and after a little bit of progression, you start unlocking ATV and UTV paths as well. You get one event per day in each Career mode and progression leads to the next day. There are not a lot of options to choose from every day however the number of events is pretty decent and diversified. There is a different challenge in every category and you can switch between the three paths at any time after completing a race.
If you want to change your pace from the normal Career Mode events, you can head over to the Exhibition tab and take part in different offline events. These include QuickPlay events which range from Trials to normal circuit racing to more along and the Time Trials where you must race against the time. If you want to race online, you can head over to the Online mode where you can compete with players from around the world in all of the main game event types and can even join with friends to have some fun in your compound in the Squad Compound mode. This mode is exceptionally fun if you have a few of your friends playing the game with you. For customization, you can head over to the Garage to purchase new vehicles and view your current ones. You can also purchase new gear such as helmets, boots, and more for your rider and you can change your looks in the Locker.
The overall track design is really good and the game offers a great variety of different events in the game. Each track in the game has multiple terrain options and you have different approaches to turns as well. You have your normal circuits which are both open areas and closed racing stadiums for in-door events. You even have some open tracks which are more sprint-oriented and point-to-point racing which offer you a more open-world racing opportunity. The sound design of the game is pretty decent as well and it suits well with the game as the bikes, ATVs, and UTVs sound really good in the game. With all this brilliant amount of content in the game and the beautiful visuals, MX vs ATV Legends fails to deliver in aspects that are crucial to the game and the biggest one is the AI design and the actual gameplay of the game.
The list of problems and issues with MX vs ATV Legends is a long one. Every time I review a game, I keep a notepad and a pen with me to note everything good about the game and take notes about the various bugs and glitches I come across and most of the time, the bad bits are so few that I just keep them in my mental notes but that was not the case this time around. The bugs and glitches are so much in MX vs ATV Legends that I had to make a separate list about them. Starting with the AI, the AI in the game is completely brain-dead and does not react to anything in the game. Let alone notice me in their path, the AI did not even bother turning around various obstacles coming in their way such as huge rocks, buildings, or anything else. While the circuit races are closed and have minimal to no obstacles in their way, this issue is a big problem in open races such as Trials.
In most cases, the AI would simply refuse to turn or acknowledge anything in their path and they would just blindly drive into a huge rock or a building. Instead of driving around them, the AI did not bother showing signs of any intelligence. During most of my races, the AI would also ignore my presence around them as they would blindly crash into me and push me off like some sort of a useless vehicle on the track. It showed that they are coded just to blindly follow the racing line which is really hard to follow on a dirt track since there is literally no racing line because the terrain is really slippery but the AI still would follow the very same line no matter what came into their path. Moving to the game mechanics, the vehicles do not respond to the terrain in the game really well as well.
There is no weight difference around turns and the vehicles just treat every different terrain the same way. This gets worse in tracks and areas with water around them because even a slight hint of water at your wheels would spin you out or sometimes even flip over your vehicles including UTVs. The beach areas are an absolute nightmare to race in because of this issue. Another issue is how the game treats gravity. In certain instances, after a collision, my vehicle and driver were sent high in the sky like I hit some sort of a boomerang cannon. If you fall down, the respawn time takes forever and ensures that you are at the end of the racing lineup before spawning you back in. The out-of-track limitations are extremely glitchy as well because they worked in mysterious ways for me.
Sometimes it did not trigger when I was far away from the main path in Trial races while in circuit races and other events, it would just reset my vehicles even if I was inside the track but closer to the end lines. This inconsistency of the reset mechanic does not make any sense at all since it ruins your gameplay while randomly respawning your vehicle where you do not need it and not respawning you when you really need it. After you have managed to complete an event, at the rewards screen, you are still able to control your vehicle and the controller keeps vibrating. The game also shows you off-track warnings while you are walking toward the podium screen and it just makes me wonder if someone actually finished any race during the development of the title to even notice this bizarre issue with the game.
Other issues with the game are its exceptionally long loading times on an Xbox Series X along with the long times that the game requires for rendering different models in the game. The freeroam loading works fine and I did not notice slow rendering during races, however in the Garage and the Locker menus, the rendering takes an exceptionally long time which shows that the game is not optimized really well. The character also flickers randomly while trying out different gear in the menu.
In addition, the controller vibrations are way too intense and are not reactive at all in the game. Normally, in racing games, when you are accelerating hard or braking hard, the vibration intensity increases and decreases, however, while playing MX vs ATV, the triggers keep vibrating at full intensity even when you are driving straight and without any bumps. It randomly stops even when you are driving and then it just resumes at full pace.
With modern consoles offering so many options to play around with when it comes to immersive gameplay with the controller’s vibration feature, having such a basic vibration feature just goes to show the amount of refinement going into the game. Everything that I have mentioned above in my review simply shows that the game was released earlier, and it should have stayed for final polishing a little more. Under all these issues and glitches, a really fun offroad racing game is hiding.
Final Verdict:
I have been reviewing titles for a long time and I have been sent titles from indie developers to AAA developers, but I do not remember any of them being this bad at their final release especially under a AAA publisher. I was so surprised that this game is coming out with the THQ Nordic logo on it. In its current form, MX vs ATV Legends does not look complete at all. I have played game prototypes in earlier development phases that looked and played better than this. While it looks really good and the overall presentation of the game is exceptionally well, the gameplay seriously lacks in terms of refinement and the number of glitches and bugs seriously hinders gameplay. It certainly required more time because it feels and looks like an incomplete title and it could have been an excellent off-road racing game with more time but in its current form, I can only say that you only dive into the game at your own risk. There is still good fun in the game but currently, the bad bits are taking over the good bits.
Final Score: 4.0/10
