Genre : ATV racing
Developer: Climax
Publisher: AKA Acclaim
# of Players: 2 players
Memory: N/A
ERSB: Everyone
Released On: January 21st , 2003
Also On: Playstation 2, GameCube
Features: Ride your way to Superstardom, Multi-player, Freestyle mode, ATV Academy, Challenges, licensed music, low price of $30
Introduction:
Ever since Tony Hawk, extreme-sports games have been a dime a dozen. Some have been great, some have been terrible, and ATV QPR2 falls somewhere in the middle of that. At first glance, it’s very shallow, only decent looking, very arcadey and slapsticky, but deep down, it becomes somewhat fun and very challenging. But after a while, it becomes more of a chore to unlock things, and the overall mediocrity won’t do anything special for you, and it’s decent for what it is. Get ready for a ton of frustration! It’s the only ATV game on the XBOX, but like I said, it’s decent.
Presentation:
It’s from Acclaim so you can’t expect anything great. Generic menus, generic background music, not many options. When you start out, you create your profile, and you “create your rider” but that feature sucks. There is zero customization. You put your name, you pick a basic model (male or female) and pick their color of gear and clothing. There’s just nothing you can do to make your rider cool or unique, so they all end up looking generic. The overall atmosphere of the game is decent. You just get the sense that they tried too hard to make it hip or cool, but it ended up almost cheesy, and way too typical. Now, not to rag on Acclaim again, but as you know, they aren’t exactly known as the best developer/publisher ever, and that trend continues to go on. The feel of the players, the ATV’s, the tracks, the music, nothing feels even remotely original, just the standard stuff you’ve grown to expect. Sure, it has licensed music, but under 10 songs, and by no one noteworthy, with bands like Godsmack and Rollins Band. There’s no licensed gear, clothing, sponsor stickers, banners, nothing. Now, you can unlock pro-riders (I think they’re pro) by getting gold medals in ‘Challenge Mode’, which is basically a tutorial, but it has time-limits, obstacles, and so forth. The only problem is that it’s practically impossible to unlock them. I honed my skills for a solid two weeks, and still couldn’t unlock a single one. I had my rider at the top rank, Superstar, leveled to the max, and I still couldn’t get any better than a silver medal. It kinda takes the point out of it if half the gamers can’t even get good enough to get them, but I would assume you feel somewhat rewarded after your hard work.
Gameplay:
There are virtually no traces of any simulation-style elements. It’s all arcadish, which means kinda loose, non-realistic gameplay. While it’s realistic in that you can run into a wall and you’ll fly off your bike, but the control isn’t tight at all, and not very precise. All of the tracks are basically the same, just with other conditional elements like snow, ice, desert, swamp, etc. Speaking of environmental conditions, that was the biggest advantage of the gameplay. Your bike will react to the environments, such as you’ll slide all over the place in the ice and snow, while the hilly, sandy deserts are slow and grainy. It adds some umph to the otherwise generic gameplay. One feature that most will overlook is the ability to kick other riders off their bikes. In the easier difficulties, you’ll hardly ever use this, if ever, and neither do your opponents. It’s practically oblivious. In the tougher modes, however, it becomes essential for victory. I can’t count how many times I had to restart because some cheap-ass kicked me off of my bike 20 feet from the finish line. It gets very, very frustrating. Just like every other extreme-sports game, there is an emphasis on tricks. There is a trick system, and it’s pretty decent. The animations for them are very weak and choppy, but the tricks are pretty cool nonetheless. You’ll score better when you link tricks together, but there really aren’t enough tricks to really say there’s a wide-variety of them. One of the less-realistic things that I liked and hated at the same time was the ability to pull off a string of tricks and then land safely. You almost ALWAYS land safely. You will land on all fours about 9 outta 10 tries. And while it makes it easier and less frustrating, it also takes away any challenge when it comes to scoring. There is a turbo meter that you fill up by doing tricks successfully and when you pre-load and hit boost, you’ll get double the air, which gives you extra points when you’ll score “highest air” or “longest jump”. So in the beginning of your career, you want to just win the race. In the later stages of your career, you need to focus on winning the race AND scoring uber-points with tricks. That’s where it gets insanely difficult. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Visuals:
Everything is very average. The character models are almost laughable, but that’s because they all look the same, except wearing different colored gear. They often bare resemblance to a beefy stick-man. When your rider flies off of his bike, it’s hard not to laugh. It just looks very “bleh!” The ATV’s themselves actually look pretty good, but again, there’s nothing distinguishable about any of them, other than the ATC which only has 3 wheels. Very few of them even have multiple colors, they just look bland and regular. The environments look pretty good. As ironic as it may be, the mud is the best looking thing. There are a lot of one-tone textures, so there’s not a ton of variation. For example, in the desert, all you see is sand, and yes, that’s common sense, it would have been nice to see some colorful banners hanging up or something to add a little spice. The overall environments are a tad mundane. The tracks themselves aren’t too bad, other than a few of them are very similar. You will see cheap obstacles on tracks such as road-signs and the like, but they’re very 2D and lifeless. I don’t recall a single thing that impressed me.
Sound/Audio:
Just like the graphics, the sound is soulless. Of course you get the “vroom!” and the “thuds” as your bike crashes to the ground, but other than that, you might as well have the television on mute. I mentioned the music of the game, and while there will be plenty of fans that like it, I sure as hell didn’t. Some of the bands on here are Godsmack, Boxcar Racer, Rollins Band, Midtown, and Bionic Jive. Acclaim could have done much better when it came to selecting tracks for the game. There are less than 10 tracks, so it gets very, very, very monotonous. I’ve read another review and they said there was an option to use custom soundtracks. But the box doesn’t have that feature checked, and I looked at every possible option the game had, but alas, I never found it. It’s a shame, too, because it honestly would have added a lot more to the playing experience. The songs they picked are terrible; the best one is only good. I’m puzzled as to why Acclaim skipped over the soundtrack feature. It was on Dave Mirra 2. Maybe it was just an oversight, we’ll never know. Oh well.
Final Thoughts:
Not being a fan of the genre, I played this game with an open mind. When I first started playing it, I just could not stand it. The difficulty factored in with the regular look and overall feel of the game turned me off. But once I finished all of the tutorials and learned the trick system, and how to basically play the game, I was interested. While there definitely wasn’t anything making me want to play, I just came upon myself to play it, and unlock all of the ATV’s. On the other hand, it pissed me off that I couldn’t unlock the pro-riders. Some of those challenges are ultra-unrealistic and I’d love to see even the developers get the gold medal on some of those, like riding a wheelie for 300 meters without letting your front tires touch any. Impossible. The sad thing is that that’s one of the more tame challenges. Overall, seeing as this is the only ATV game for the XBOX, fans of the genre should at least rent it. You’ll probably want to rent it before you buy it, unless you’re just hardcore for ATV games. Casual gamers might be attracted to it for no reason, but everyone else probably won’t give a damn about it.
