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IGN Review of MX vs ATV: On the Edge
If the PSP lacks anything, it's certainly not racing titles. Right from the get-go it's housed plenty of solid racers, including Sony's own ATV Offroad Fury: Blazin' Trails. While Sony's foray into portable ATV racing was a fun, dirty romp, there's a new king of the hill tearing up the dirt: MX vs. ATV Unleashed: On the Edge.
On the Edge is essentially an extension of the MX vs. ATV Unleashed release on current-gen consoles, which we
scored very favorably last year. While the series' transition to PSP isn't quite as perfect as we'd have hoped, it's a damn good game that should please not only the motocross and ATV fans out there, but most any PSP owner.
Aside from the requisite excellent turn layout, part of the reason that Rainbow's track designs are so good is that they make excellent use of its "rhythm racing" engine. Preloading your jumps, or compressing your shocks and then unloading them at the top of a jump for increased distance, is obviously a big part of the game here, and the track design plays excellently into this mechanic. You'll find jumps that perfectly feed you over a middle triple-set and onto the welcoming downhill slope of a fifth, should you happen to nail it. More strategic, however, are the sections that you can't make with a single, huge jump, which is where the rhythm racing and preloading aspects of On the Edge really come into their own.
It's the subtle nuances and tradeoffs between jump distance and speed that Rainbow has really figured out how to fine-tune. Do you take one big jump at the start and hope to clear a section of hills, or do you take the first, somewhat easy, ride down the second for speed and hit the third to launch over the fourth? Any motocross or ATV game can throw a series of hills and such into the middle of a straightaway and require that you hit them properly, but Rainbow's track design gives you puzzles to solve, sections that actually make sense from a challenge standpoint in the world of racing, and that's really where the game shines.
While you're free to roam the countryside on your own and practice your lines and stunts, races wouldn't be any fun without opponents. On the Edge's AI system works basically as well as the console release of MX vs. ATV Unleashed, which is to say it's quite good overall. AI riders run realistic lines and don't stick to predefined routes, making them seem like they're racing the track itself and not on a preconfigured line. They're a little weak at the default settings, so you'll want to turn it up a notch once you get a handle on things, but it's generally good stuff.
One thing that feels a tad different than past console releases is that On the Edge feels slightly more unforgiving with regards to landing jumps. If you land on the upside of a jump, or even the top in some instances, you seem a fair bit more likely to bail than in some of Rainbow's past work. This makes knowing when to really fly off a jump an important thing, because if you take off on the wrong ramp and don't hit it just right, you'll be punished for it.
Visually, ATV vs. MX Unleashed: On the Edge is a pretty decent looking PSP game. It's maybe not as nice as the console versions are when compared to other games on the same systems, but it's not bad. The bikes and riders all look pretty nice and are animated well through turns and such, and the environment is fairly well detailed, but the texture work on the land is rather low-res. This makes some sense given the enormous size of the tracks, especially the outdoor areas, but it's still fairly muddy, visually speaking.
Going along with the graphics is the game's ragdoll engine, which shows itself again and again every time someone crashes. It's very well implemented and really one of the more realistic ragdoll implementations out there. And, while we're on the subject, the "canon ejection" thing that happens when you try and venture out of a level is indeed intact, thankfully, since it's one of the damn funniest things in videogames these days.
One major fault is that there isn't any sort of autosave feature to be found, requiring that you remember to manually save every time you pick up the system. You're not ever prompted to do so, which means you have to traverse into the Profile options and choose to save, should you happen to remember. I lost a couple hours of progress at one point simply because I had to run and forgot to save my progress. It's fairly rare to find a game without autosave these days, and especially a game that doesn't prompt you when you want to quit and head back to the main menu.
As mentioned, the load times are rather horrendous, enough so that the problem even carries over into the menus. If an option preview starts loading, like the image of a bike in the store or the preview of a map, you'll lose control over the menu while the game pauses to load. Since it can take a few seconds or more to load something as little as a single bike, this can really slow things down a lot if you don't skip to exactly what you want.
Lastly, to extend the game's replay factor, On the Edge features multiplayer gaming for up to four folks. It doesn't support Infrastructure mode, unfortunately, but Ad Hoc provides for some pretty fun multiplayer madness. You can set vehicle restrictions, event type and everything you'd expect; essentially, if you can configure it in the single-player game, you can customize it for multiplayer.
©2006-02-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
On the Edge is essentially an extension of the MX vs. ATV Unleashed release on current-gen consoles, which we
scored very favorably last year. While the series' transition to PSP isn't quite as perfect as we'd have hoped, it's a damn good game that should please not only the motocross and ATV fans out there, but most any PSP owner.
Aside from the requisite excellent turn layout, part of the reason that Rainbow's track designs are so good is that they make excellent use of its "rhythm racing" engine. Preloading your jumps, or compressing your shocks and then unloading them at the top of a jump for increased distance, is obviously a big part of the game here, and the track design plays excellently into this mechanic. You'll find jumps that perfectly feed you over a middle triple-set and onto the welcoming downhill slope of a fifth, should you happen to nail it. More strategic, however, are the sections that you can't make with a single, huge jump, which is where the rhythm racing and preloading aspects of On the Edge really come into their own.
It's the subtle nuances and tradeoffs between jump distance and speed that Rainbow has really figured out how to fine-tune. Do you take one big jump at the start and hope to clear a section of hills, or do you take the first, somewhat easy, ride down the second for speed and hit the third to launch over the fourth? Any motocross or ATV game can throw a series of hills and such into the middle of a straightaway and require that you hit them properly, but Rainbow's track design gives you puzzles to solve, sections that actually make sense from a challenge standpoint in the world of racing, and that's really where the game shines.
While you're free to roam the countryside on your own and practice your lines and stunts, races wouldn't be any fun without opponents. On the Edge's AI system works basically as well as the console release of MX vs. ATV Unleashed, which is to say it's quite good overall. AI riders run realistic lines and don't stick to predefined routes, making them seem like they're racing the track itself and not on a preconfigured line. They're a little weak at the default settings, so you'll want to turn it up a notch once you get a handle on things, but it's generally good stuff.
One thing that feels a tad different than past console releases is that On the Edge feels slightly more unforgiving with regards to landing jumps. If you land on the upside of a jump, or even the top in some instances, you seem a fair bit more likely to bail than in some of Rainbow's past work. This makes knowing when to really fly off a jump an important thing, because if you take off on the wrong ramp and don't hit it just right, you'll be punished for it.
Visually, ATV vs. MX Unleashed: On the Edge is a pretty decent looking PSP game. It's maybe not as nice as the console versions are when compared to other games on the same systems, but it's not bad. The bikes and riders all look pretty nice and are animated well through turns and such, and the environment is fairly well detailed, but the texture work on the land is rather low-res. This makes some sense given the enormous size of the tracks, especially the outdoor areas, but it's still fairly muddy, visually speaking.
Going along with the graphics is the game's ragdoll engine, which shows itself again and again every time someone crashes. It's very well implemented and really one of the more realistic ragdoll implementations out there. And, while we're on the subject, the "canon ejection" thing that happens when you try and venture out of a level is indeed intact, thankfully, since it's one of the damn funniest things in videogames these days.
One major fault is that there isn't any sort of autosave feature to be found, requiring that you remember to manually save every time you pick up the system. You're not ever prompted to do so, which means you have to traverse into the Profile options and choose to save, should you happen to remember. I lost a couple hours of progress at one point simply because I had to run and forgot to save my progress. It's fairly rare to find a game without autosave these days, and especially a game that doesn't prompt you when you want to quit and head back to the main menu.
As mentioned, the load times are rather horrendous, enough so that the problem even carries over into the menus. If an option preview starts loading, like the image of a bike in the store or the preview of a map, you'll lose control over the menu while the game pauses to load. Since it can take a few seconds or more to load something as little as a single bike, this can really slow things down a lot if you don't skip to exactly what you want.
Lastly, to extend the game's replay factor, On the Edge features multiplayer gaming for up to four folks. It doesn't support Infrastructure mode, unfortunately, but Ad Hoc provides for some pretty fun multiplayer madness. You can set vehicle restrictions, event type and everything you'd expect; essentially, if you can configure it in the single-player game, you can customize it for multiplayer.
©2006-02-27, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved