MX Unleashed

After spending a few years shaping up their design skills with ATVs, jet skis, and even podracers, Rainbow Studios decided to bring their racing games back to where it all started: Motorcycles. Despite the change of series and publisher, the experience isn’t too different. The same use of momentum from the previous Rainbow offroading games remains. You need to look for the right grooves in the tracks to keep your speed going. If you misjudge your landings, you lose your speed, and it’s difficult to catch yourself back up to a good pace.

The main gameplay difference in MX Unleashed is the change of physics. These aren’t ATVs, and even if you’re used to Motocross Madness, you have to relearn how these bikes shift around and lean from side to side. The pre-load jumping mechanic is still here, which you need to trigger while you’re still on the ramp. The stunts also remain, of course, though they feel more responsive than before. The backflip mechanic is awkward, but it nets you a ton of points, so it’s always worth going for during freestyle stunt objectives.

The tracks are generally the same as in previous games. Enduro mode doesn’t exist here, so you only get the National tracks, which take place in outside environments, and Supercross tracks, which take place in a stadium. Each track is littered with the same motocross bumps and jumps you know and love. Seeing as this is the start of a new series (MX vs. ATV), I can forgive Rainbow for retreading their usual track designs. For a standalone game, this is plenty enough for newcomers to take in.

If you’re coming in from my angle, however, meaning you’ve played the previous Rainbow games, this isn’t going to impress. Those looking for NEW STUFF will only find it in the game’s new Freestyle mode. These objectives involve jumping off of highlighted sections of hills and landing in specific red squares. Unfortunately, that’s all you get. Aside from that, each of the five levels have the usual ‘score many points’ objective, and then there’s a single race against a special vehicle. The special vehicles are a bit of a novel concept. You race against a buggy, a monster truck, an airplane, etc. Once you beat the opponent in the race, you get to DRIVE THEIR CAR. It’d be funny if you could take the monster truck around the supercross tracks, but unfortunately, you can only drive the special vehicles in their designated freestyle level. Even worse, if you want to unlock the next freestyle level, you need to complete ALL of the objectives in the level that comes before it.

Though, that’s not entirely true. While yes, you do need to beat all the challenges to unlock the next level, you can also buy each completed objective individually. Your currency is acquired by racking up points from stunts, though don’t think you have an easy way out, yet. Each objective costs a ton of points, and in the time it would take to grind out the stunts to unlock them, you might as well just beat them normally!

To further explain these jump/landing challenges, there are ‘hit’ challenges and ‘run’ challenges. ‘Hit’ challenges pit you up against AI bikers. The first person to nail all 10 jumps in an area wins. Thankfully, Rainbow included a ‘reset’ button that sets you up in the right position for most of these jumps. Not every setup position is ideal, but believe me, you’ll be thankful you don’t need to drive all the way back to the start of every single ramp. The ‘Run’ challenges work in a similar way. You nail jumps, but you have to hit every single landing on your first try, otherwise you fail. Unless you use the reset button of course! It still works here as long as you’re still in the air once you use it, and you won’t autofail because of it. It’s a bit cheap on the player’s part, but it makes the experience a lot less grating.

That previous Offroad Fury variety in vehicle choice is also lost with MX’s motorcycle selection. You can change the colors around, but every bike plays the same as each other, and you can’t unlock any new designs. At least this prevents you from having to currency grind to progress, though the gameplay ends up getting stale after a while. You can unlock more powerful engines and trickier tracks as you progress, though the feel of the gameplay is more or less the same. You jump higher, and the AI is more difficult to beat, but that’s about it.

Since MX Unleashed is so similar to Offroad Fury 2, I can’t knock it too hard. It’s one of those ‘not broke, don’t fix it’ sorts of games, though the content is much less exciting here. Aside from the impressive physics, the rest of this game feels like a downgrade for the developer’s standards. We’re missing most of the variety from before, including longer and shorter tracks, varying vehicle specs/models, multiple terrains with unique physics (water, mud, ice). This is about as straightforward as Rainbow Studios gets, but despite my complaining, I can’t turn down some simple, fun dirt bike racing.

It's one of those "good enough" games. The early 2000s were full of them. The kinda game that came out as half the price of a huge triple A title and was good enough for the money. Essential to what I would consider to be a complete game library, like a complete meal.

The gameplay isn't groundbreaking, but isn't completely awful. It's a motocross game. Does what it says on the tin.

Soundtrack is dated by today's standards but was perfect for 2004.

Overall, not bad for being a budget title.