A unique off-road racer that could use just a little more polish.

MX vs. ATV Alive is a pretty good example of why it's always a bad idea to play a game for a couple hours and think you've seen everything it has to offer. If I had graded Alive based on the first couple hours, its score would have been significantly lower than it is now. It's a game that really starts to open up once you get through some of the arbitrary level unlocks, which I'll rail against here in a bit, and once it does you realize there's a pretty unique racing title underneath.

First things first, this game isn't for everyone. Not even for all racing fans. The controls are touchy, and needing to use both analog sticks to control not only the direction of the vehicle but the shift in your driver's body weight takes some adjusting to. Having not played the previous games in the series, this was a pretty new control experience for me, and it took me a while to even feel moderately skilled at it. Toss in the clutch mechanic, which you use to help give you a boost of speed around corners, and it's not going to control like the racing titles you're used to.

Also, as the name obviously suggests, this is 100 percent geared towards a very specific sub-genre of racing. The name of the game isn't lying to you, you're only going to be racing MX bikes and ATVs, so don't expect any similar offshoots to show up. Also, the vehicle content itself feels a little on the light side, you get 125, 250 and 450 variations of both vehicle types, with two manufacturers being represented in the core game. There seems to be some DLC either available or coming soon to expand the vehicle roster a bit, but it certainly doesn't feature the expanded list of vehicles that you'd find in other titles.

What MX vs. ATV Alive does excel at, though, is its track selection. When the game begins you only have a handful of tracks to choose from, two Short tracks, two National tracks, and one Free Ride map. Assuming that you buy the game new, there's free DLC in the box that includes two more National tracks, and a very cool Free Ride track based on James Stewarts' compound, but as far as opening content goes it doesn't seem like much. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the really ridiculous experience and leveling system the game employs to piecemeal out unlocks for you, and because of that you're stuck racing the same tracks over and over again until you start to unlock more. However, once you do, you'll have three Free Ride maps, four Short tracks, and fourteen National tracks. The National tracks in particular are the highlight of the group, featuring some really wild races that incorporate all manners of ramps, bumps, sharp turns, and so on that make for some exciting and oftentimes frustrating races. These are the real challenges of the game, and some of the later tracks are even fairly long.

Another bonus to the track selection is the fact that you can customize your races prior to starting them, picking from four AI difficulty settings, and the ability to pick how many laps you'd like to do, offering up 3 to 30 for National tracks, and 5 to 30 for Short tracks. Also, you can choose the vehicles you'd like to race against, which will typically default to the class you currently are using, but can be changed to include lower or higher classes, as well as both vehicle types.

MX vs. ATV Alive does have its share of problems though, the chief amongst them being the unlock system. When you play the game online or offline, you'll earn experience after every race that's applied to your rider. The more experience you gain, the more you'll level up, which you've seen applied in a variety of games before. Most games use this in the same way Alive does, to lock away content until you hit a certain level, and that way you constantly feel like you're getting new stuff every 20 minutes or so depending on how high you are level wise. However, the approach taken here is a little odd. While you go up in levels, you will tend to unlock something new every time, but that's almost strictly relegated to gear and rider skills (think perks). Gear is fine and all, but if I'm not unlocking new vehicles and tracks, the game runs the risk of getting stale pretty quick.

That's exactly what happens for the first ten levels you gain, you literally don't unlock new tracks until you hit level 10, at which point you'll get another Short track, four more National tracks, and another Free Rider course. Why they didn't just stretch these tracks out amongst levels 1 through 9 is beyond me, so having to grind 10 levels worth of experience on the same beginning tracks over and over seems like a bad idea. It becomes even worse for the next set of unlocks, which don't occur until level 25. That's right; you have to grind 15 more levels of experience to get more tracks. Also, that level 25 unlock is the last of the track and vehicle unlocks you get, even though your experience levels go all the way to 50. There's nothing outside of rider skills and gear that gets unlocked past 25, so unless you're feeling particularly dedicated to the online side of things, I don't see the point in leveling to 50.

Experience doesn't just apply to your rider though, which is a good thing. The vehicle that you've currently selected also gains experience, and can level up three times. Each increase will grant more parts unlocked for your ride, which can increase its performance, along with unlocks that are strictly cosmetic. However, there are only 11 vehicles in the core game, so once again it won't take long to burn through leveling up each vehicle.

Another annoyance that will begin to get on your nerves the more you play the single player side, is that since the game has no real career or season mode, every race is essentially handled like an exhibition race in other titles. Once you finish a race you get dumped back to the main menu, which I feel like it could at least put you back on the track select screen if nothing else. Also, it needs to save every time you kick back to the main menu, which is thankfully short, but I feel like the whole process of finishing one race and starting another could be streamlined a little better. The other issue I had was that the game wouldn't save my preferences for the different races. I appreciate that I can choose difficulty, opponent type, and laps before a race, but I'd like those selections to carry over to the next without having to select them every time. Going through the set-up screen prior to every race gets a little old after a while.

The last thing I'll mention is the online side of the game, which works pretty well. I had a couple issues with lag, some noticeable instances where you could see cars flashing in and out as the game adjusted for their actual position on the track, but overall the network stuff held up pretty well. There are not a huge number of players online at any one time, but with the online mode being divided up between three difficulty sections, and then two vehicle types, I imagine the player base is a little splintered. I seemed to find larger matches on the MX races more than the ATV selections, and did manage to get a few full races started. You also get the full track selection from the single player experience, but if you have DLC track content and other racers do not, they'll get booted from the game if that track comes up. Finally, there is a spectator mode if you jump into a match in the middle of a race, so that's a plus.

MX vs. ATV Alive isn't a stand out racing title, but for a budget priced game it ended up being a whole lot better than I would have suspected. It's really niche as far as racing games go, and it's certainly not the best looking title out there, but once you get the hang of the controls and unlock all the track content, you'll have some fun with it. Definitely not what I'd consider a must buy, but if you have a passing interest in the vehicle selection I think it's worth checking out at some point. It can definitely be improved, so here's hoping if another sequel pops up down the road it will continue to see some refinement.