Motocross Madness – Review
After a wait of nearly 13 years, the next installment of the Motocross Madness series has arrived on Xbox 360. The game originally was to be named Avatar Motocross Madness, but they went for the good old fashioned name, which many of the oldies amongst us will know. The game might not quite be what you remember from the ‘good old days’ though.
Story:
It’s to be expected that a game like Motocross Madness will not offer you the most complicated plotline there is. If there is a hint of a story in Motocross Madness, it is the Career Mode in which you will simply try to beat all of your opponents and earn money. The typical story of one, who wants to be a professional motorcyclist.
Graphics:
Motocross Madness went for a cartoonish look, unlike its predecessors. The game went for a look that will probably attract more casual racing fans, than only the diehard motorcycle fans.
Even though the game has a simplistic, yet appealing look, there are a lot of issues when it comes to the graphical quality of the game. The game has loads of ‘pop-up’ issues, where the environment and its attributes, simply pop-up. This causes a lot of annoyance when trying to figure out how to use your surroundings for shortcuts or simply to stay on track.
Not only pop-up tends to be an issue. Slow loading and disappearing textures, wheels sinking halfway through the ground, getting stuck in walls and even bumping in to invisible walls tend to be another set of problems. Plenty of these problems should have been fixed before the release and they tend to make the game lose its original appeal.
Sound:
When it comes to the overall sound quality of the game, there is not much to complain about. Your bikes sound realistic, the music isn’t really half that bad and the environmental sounds, sound like they should. The game occasionally mixes up the genders of your Avatars though. More than once, the game made my male Avatar sound like a female. Fun times, fun times.
Gameplay:
The game is a typical Motocross racing games, with a few tweaks that make it accessible for casual gamers. You will probably spend most of your time, trying to earn medals in the Career Mode.
(Avatar) Motocross Madness revolves around 4 different playstyles, be it online of offline. You will be able to compete normal races, duke it out with the developers in the rivals mode, explore the maps in exploration and perform hefty trick combo’s in the trickstyle mode.
Most of these modes will pretty much speak for themselves, but the exploration mode is worth explaining a bit further. In exploration you will be able to roam freely in one of the 3 main areas the games has to offer you. Each of these 3 areas normally has 3 tracks of its own, but exploration merges them together and allows you the see the environment between them. The main goal of this mode is to collect ‘golden skulls’ which happen to be scattered around the map. Some may be easy to reach, others tend to be difficult to reach or require some decent exploring or brainstorming. This mode is especially entertaining when you’re able to play it with a friend. This will be fun in trying to compete to reach impossible places or point out some of the skulls that you might overlook. All in all, this mode tends to feel like a fun extra, that raises the bar for this new edition of Motocross Madness.
All of the above goes hand in hand with a leveling system that allows you the unlock new skills, motorcycles, and costume pieces. Overall this creates a goal in the game, that otherwise may have been a simple hunt for gold, to unlock extra parts and bikes.
The game only offers you around five motorcycles, but they tend to feel differently when driving around with them. Sometimes it’s advisable to pick a different one for the event you’re playing.
Another gimmick the game throws at you, is the Fame Star challenges. These are pretty much a bunch of weekly challenges, which make your Fame Star ranking go up. A small incentive for those who look for extra goals in games like this.
Sadly the game has one giant issue, namely the controls. During the course of the game, you will almost never feel in control of your motorcycle and you may even thing your bike has a mind of its own at times. The game tends to recognize only ‘don’t steer’ or ‘STEER AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT’. This tends to be a bother when trying to navigate through small paths, sharp turns or ledges. Especially reaching some of the skulls in exploration with these controls tends to be amazingly hard. When you add invisible obstacles to the equation, the fun truly begins.
Conclusion:
Even though Motocross Madness has its fair share of graphical glitches and a control scheme that isn’t really up to par with recent racing games, the game tends to offer a decent amount of fun. Invite a friend to play the game in split screen or take turns to see each other perform several crashes and you will still get your money’s worth out of this game.
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