MX Vs ATV Legends has tons of potential, but there is also a lot of room for improvement.
We all love a good racing game. Cars, motorbikes, BMX bikes, it doesn’t matter to us. We love the thrill of racing against other vehicles, and it doesn’t matter what location, either. But we all have the ultimate goal of wanting to win the race and be the best. Over the years, especially in modern gaming, we have been blessed with outstanding racing games. Forza, Gran Turismo, you name it.
Now, we have the latest instalment of MX vs ATV Legends, which allows you to guide your biker to victory. If you are a motocross fan like me, you would probably want to try out this game. In recent years, the competition for this genre has been crazy. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be a similar game. But not only that, you’ll notice that they were released quite recently.
Therefore, with this game, we hope that the developer has brought their A-game to stand out. But my question is, will it? Well, with the alarming number of negative reviews the last game from the franchise had gotten, we hope this is the case. There were many faults the last game possessed. The gameplay looked weak. The developer would need to have learned from this and project it into ensuring the latest game is far better.
Now, as we have just entered the 2022 Loretta Lynn’s AMA Amateur National Motocross Championships, and like any other game in which the related sport is entering a competition, you would like to play it because you probably want to get the same experience as the real thing. Therefore, in this instance, this alone would prompt any gamer into playing a motocross game to try and replicate what the real-life racers are doing.
Having said all of that, this is pretty much where it ends because this game was a huge let-down, and I was solely speaking from anticipation. Honestly, I did not have much fun playing this game. I enjoyed it for an hour or so, and I don’t think I want to play the game again. It’s like they carried the same issues from the previous game, added a couple of improvements, and then ran with it. Genuinely curious as to whether they looked at the feedback of the last game.
MX Vs ATV Legends, on the flip side, have a decent selection of game modes. Excellent concepts for them, especially for the career mode, and having certain choices determine your rider’s future, the tournaments, and the possibility of claiming sponsorships. Plus, the brand-new trails mode where you can have outdoor racing. Or, if you and your friend just want to relax and have fun, there is a 2-player split screen, and you can even contend in a 16 online multiplayer mode. But there is almost no way you can enjoy these features if the gameplay does not match.
MX Vs ATV Legends’ gameplay is shocking; I’m struggling to figure out where to point. The developer had specified that this game now has a refined system, but I’m not seeing this anywhere. However, what I am seeing, and it is also very clear, is that they hadn’t improved this game much, if at all. The controls are very stiff, and it’s increasingly difficult to steer many times. This results in crashing on surfaces or falling off the vehicle, which is one of the most frustrating parts.
No matter how much precision you have on steering, you end up crashing very easily, and you do not see this happening in real life. Not to mention, it’s strenuous to execute moves while in the air, and when you finally do, you very rarely land properly; you most time just end up crashing. During a race, you will often find yourself losing your position, even if you decide to play on the easier difficulties due to the game’s mechanical performance weaknesses.
Are you prepared to know about the worst part? There is more, much more. It doesn’t discount the significant number of bugs and glitches I had encountered; most time, it happens during a race. I lose urgency playing at times, and I’d even ask myself a few times if I should even bother finishing a race at all.
MX Vs ATV Legends’ graphics are no better and very inconsistent. Also, it doesn’t feel like I am playing a current-gen game. More like it’s running with 4K resolution with substandard frame rates. Although some of the designs of the locations and vehicles are stunning, they don’t do much to compensate for the game’s lack of graphical performance. The animations are very poor, and sometimes, when you crash, you encounter a big glitch with your rider flying off their bike, and would takes seconds before landing. And the ground textures look amateurish.
MX Vs. ATV Legends’ audio is very good. The game has a good selection of music for you to vibe to, and some of the songs would make you want to stop what you are doing to enjoy them properly. The sounds of the vehicles are authentic. Generally speaking, the audio is the only area I didn’t have a problem with in this game. This should not be happening for any game whatsoever.
Ultimately, the game seems unfinished. This is not an improvement over the predecessor; in fact, you could consider this a downgrade. You can even make a case for this being the worst game of the franchise. Although the developers are on to something with the features, on the flip side, with almost everything else that pretty much blows it out of the water, I am amazed that even after going through the testing process, the developer still felt this game was worthy of releasing in this state.
This game is crying out for updates to rectify the very large number of errors, to make this game much more playable. At this time, I would not blame any player if they had stopped after playing once.
MX Vs ATV Legends is available on PlayStation 4 & PlayStation 5, and Microsoft Windows. Also, follow our website for the latest gaming reviews.
