I have been playing motorcycle games on and off since Excitebike on the NES and they have always held a special place in my gaming library. Without a doubt the longest running series that really caters to what I want from those games has been MX vs ATV and while it has been a number of years since the last release, developer Rainbow Studios has taken the time to build something new. Did they succeed with this new dirt flinging experience or is it a case of a step to far?

When MX vs ATV Legends begins, it literally drops you into the world and sets you down the side of a mountain, it takes this time to teach you the tools you need, in order to make your way around the new open world location. Once you have completed the tutorial, the game will actually make you undertake some even more in-depth tutorials, in order for you to understand everything that they have to offer. However, once you have those completed you can begin your career and make your way from the bottom of the ladder to the top and thus achieving the much-desired Legend status, you just have to complete some races first. The career mode is broken down into three classes, MX for your bikes, ATV for your quads and UTV for your quads with a roof and you have to complete portions of the MX path, before you can start down the others. It is a weird requirement, because if you are an ATV fan, being forced onto two wheels for a few races, just to unlock the ability to race in the ATV, feels cheap, like they opted to artificially inflate the experience.

Once you have started to chip away at the races, in any discipline, you will start to be rewarded with motocredits, fans and sponsorships. The first can be used to purchase new gear for your rides, colours and such, so you can keep up with the rest of the pack and while these upgrades are slow to get at the start, once you start earning the pole position on some races more will unlock. Fans are the big thing to get though, as they are what you need to have, in order to unlock events down the line, basically if you are not winning and gaining fans, no-one wants you in their race. Between race events, you can drive around the open world location, interacting with your crew, coach and other members of the team. You can also drive around to collect some floating icons, some of which are in very challenging locations and getting them will take some time and skill to obtain, but as with all games that do that, you will get a sense of satisfaction from it as well. The time between races is actually the thing I liked the most about the game, not only because it made me think of Motocross Madness and its sequel – both funnily enough made by Rainbow Studios, but rather it gave me freedom to mess around.

The idea of messing around in racing game is nothing new, Need for Speed Underground 2 was the first that really embraced that, with Forza Horizon 5 being the latest champion to do it as well, but this is a first for the MX vs ATV series. Kodiak Valley, the name of this untamed space, is filled with hills to climb and gaps to clear, though it may not be brimming with events like the recent Forza entry is, there is still a charm about racing around this landscape. Once you have had enough of that and jump back into the races and events, you can get a sense of the variety in the locations, while the earlier tracks will have you racing across the grass and mud, similar to the open world, later locations will take you to deserts and snow-covered mountains. The variety isn’t just cosmetic, as each location has different materials that make up the ground you race on, each impacts how you get around.

Track deformation is a big deal here, when you are out in front of the pack, you are changing the level of the course behind you, which makes it more challenging for others. However, if you are not in the lead, you have to deal with the changes in the track as you race, so that turn that was pretty easy on lap 1, may be more challenging now, as large trenches have been carved by all the other bikes. The events vary in that some are lap based races and those can be quite demanding, especially with the track deformation, but the new addition of the trails is where the real challenge comes in. These trails are point-to-point races, you start in one spot and race to the finish and much like the open world, they are quite lengthy and often feature a lot of variety in the terrain, one such event has you starting down at ground level and pushes you up the side of a snowy mountain, with the terrain changing the closer you get to the top.

Where things start to fall apart though is in the technical aspects of the game, yes the handling of the bikes and the track deformation all work wonderfully, it is the rest of the game that has issues. First up the load times are insanely long, the quickest I ever recorded was 32 seconds and that was after a hard console reboot, the average time was closer to 55 seconds and there were some that crossed over a minute. When some tracks take 3 or 4 minutes to complete a lap, it isn’t so bad, but some events barely last a minute and having the load time into the track be as long as the entire time on the track, it is not a great combination. Load times are not the only complaint I have, the entire game feels incomplete, outside of the racing, heck even watching the other riders at the start line, they only have two animation frames for them revving their engines and you can clearly see them snapping between the two.

There are also plenty of instances of a lack of animation across the board, your crew back in the valley, never animate, they just stand in whatever spot they appear in, the crowds are mostly static, with the exception of a few people cheering randomly. The crowds though, much like the other assets around the tracks, never appear on screen until the last possible moment, meaning the game suffers from an extreme case of pop-in and it is very noticeable. Now this might just be on the Xbox Series X version of the game, but the controller rumble was essentially active the entire time, as if its keyed up to the bikes engine, which sounds great in theory. However in execution, it meant that my controller would not stop vibrating and it meant I had to go into the settings to disable the vibration, just so I could play the game, without feeling like my hands were going to shake off.

On the audio side of things, the bikes sound great, there is a lot range in the motors, so it isn’t a two-tone system all the time and when you start racing in the canyons and on mountain tops, the sound of the bikes feels different, based on the terrain around you. The crowds however all feel flat, which given how they are animated, just feels appropriate, even if it was unintended and the result is that they feel like they are cheering for nothing. The game has a licenced soundtrack, but nothing in it appealed to me, some of the bands are well known and some I had never heard of before, but the music just felt a little to punk rock for me and that is not my taste.

MX vs ATV Legends is an interesting game, the core of it, the racing is sublime and each time you hit the track, in any of the vehicles, you will have to fight the ground and other racers to claim top spot. The problem is everything that wraps around the racing, to complete the experience, is either a broken mess or so inconsistent that it feels like its only half done. Fans of the series may be willing to over look those aspects and for good reason, but newcomers or people who prefer a smoother racing experience may not. It has been four years since the last game in the series and while the team have clearly taken their time on a few aspects, much of the game feels like it was left behind and that is not a move worthy of a legend.