This is the BEST of the entire MX vs. ATV franchise. The physics in the game hasn't been beaten, and has the most unique "art direction" across all games. That said, this is also the most terribly performing game.

I love this game. It's a great way to take a break and have fun sometimes. Everything is very well done.

OG BANGER

Flawed but alright off-road arcade racer with a focus on physics and handling.
You race / freestyle on all sorts of terrain with a selection of vehicles. Solid motocross gameplay!

Basic ground deformation. Good enough models. LOD is expectedly low due to the game's age, but not distractingly bad. Nice mix of locales. Visually not too bad for a 2009 console release.

Banging soundtrack that sadly has a couple songs too few to not get tiring by the end of the game for reasons listed below.

A big surprise for a port of this era is that the controls were actually good even on keyboard, the default bindings even made sense!

Aside from the questionable PC port (at least it supports 4K..), some criticisms:

• The game is way too easy, even on the hardest difficulty. After upgrading your ATV or MX bike it's really up to you to mess up enough to even get 2nd. You can pull ahead really early and just drive alone the rest of the race. The most challenging parts of this game are staying on your bike and on the track efficiently.
  
  
• Adding cars (Buggies, Sport Trucks, UTVs) to 'MX vs ATV' is kind of missing the point?
  They completely negate the whole mechanic of staying on your bike and navigating the tracks' bumps, you can just steamroll your way through the races with them. They have no upgrades and are mostly just annoying to race against on a bike -or- too easy to race with against bikes. The tutorial doesn't even mention them.
  
  
• The stats on vehicles are all over the place, pretty much pulled out of their a--. There's trucks that have 7/10 on all categories making them flawless compared to any other vehicle. Bikes don't come close to any of the cars, other than a fully upgraded ATV.
  
  
• The padding is.. a LOT. The game repeats tracks and events multiple times over, but the worst offenders are the all-vehicle races where you spend upwards of 15 minutes per race (usually 5 looong laps). They could've cut the lap count of these down significantly. They're also the ones pretty much designed for cars and staying on bikes creates an extra challenge. The latter half of this game is just repeats of these.

All in all a fun late 2000's off-road arcade experience that overstays its welcome by a good margin, but it's up to the player to engage with it beyond getting their fill to experience that. Stuck with bikes as much as possible to maintain some challenge and because they were a lot of fun to ride.

Try it out if it's less than the price of a cup of coffee or something. And don't expect sim ..anything.

P.S. Anyone playing this on Linux / Steam Deck, use Proton 7 to avoid crashing on a specific track.

this game is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rad