MX vs. ATV Reflex

Dusky Demon NL · 2 aug 2009

Informatie - Screenshots - Trailers - Officiële website - Opmerkingen

Platforms Xbox 360
Uitgever THQ
Developer Rainbow Studio
Genre Offroad Racing
Release datum 4e kwartaal 2009

[GB]Informatie:[/GB]

THQ kondigde vandaag MX vs ATV Reflex aan, het nieuwste deel in de franchise. De titel moet spelers iets nieuws aanbieden met een zwaartekrachts-simulatie engine van de tweede generatie, genaamd Rythm Racing 2.0. Het spel zal ook een intuïtief nieuw besturingsmechanisme bevatten waarbij de spelers met de twee sticks op de controller de stoerste stunts uit kunnen halen terwijl ze door de lucht vliegen. Ook zal het terrein vervormen naarmate de race vordert, met de daarbij horende gevolgen voor de verdere race en zullen gamers online tegen elkaar kunnen racen. We houden je op de hoogte, release eind van 2009.
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Hands On Preview:

MX vs. ATV Hands On Preview

When presented with imminent danger, adrenalin floods your bloodstream and kicks your heart and metabolism into overdrive, making you ready for anything. Unfortunately, more often than not, you're just left with a queasy stomach, damp palms and a niggling feeling that something inevitably awful is about to happen to you. At least this is pretty much what happens to me whenever I get on a motorbike.

Nevertheless it is this same adrenalin rush (the good kind) that lures so many to motocross. Launching a bike 60 feet into the air is a sure-fire way to dump a load of adrenalin into your body. Recreating that integral combination of danger and exhilaration in a game is a very tall order -one that games of this genre often fall short of. However, on first appearances, MX vs. ATV Reflex has brought the player closer to the experience of a motocross rider, and in doing so has recreated some of the excitement that comes with it.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

The game's predecessor, MX vs. ATV Untamed, only used the left analogue to steer the bike, however this time around Rainbow have realised that this is something of a blunt tool. Riding a motocross bike or an ATV requires both steering and balance to guide the vehicle across undulating terrain, which is why they have introduced dual stick controls: the left stick controls the bike, while the right stick controls the rider. The idea being that if you want to turn sharply then all you need do is tilt both analogues in the same direction or to avoid an accident you can shift the riders balance to ensure he doesn't fall off.

Even after just a brief hands-on session with the game, it's easy to see that this new system is a vast improvement over the previous games. On the one hand this addition takes the franchise further into sim-racer territory by giving fanatics what they want: more control. While on the other hand the eponymous reflex system, which shows you which direction to shift the riders balance when you're about to crash, makes the game more accessible than its unnecessarily punishing predecessors.

At first getting to grips with the system is a little tricky - the natural tendency is to steer using just the left analogue. However, several disfiguring accidents later, we began to take note of the discreet red arrows in the periphery of the screen. Poorly landed jumps can be saved with a flick of the right analogue and eventually you naturally start to read the rider's position rather than the arrows themselves. Mastery of these cues means you can keep up with the pack while pulling off foolhardy back flips, while missing them leaves you slumped on the side of a track looking like a man whose skeleton has given up on the rest of his body.

Fortunately, the crashes are rarely boring. Mistiming a jump or hitting a barrier hurls your dangling body across the screen, ricocheting off barriers and mounds everywhere. Although this is massively entertaining in the replays, it might have been nice to see something a little more restrained and realistic. We're not talking dismemberment or gore, but something more akin to what motocross riders experience would have been welcome.

While hurtling through the air after one of our many, many crashes, we noticed just how picturesque the setting was. In the freestyle mode, in which you can drive around an environment of your choosing, we were shown a map dubbed as "Icarus" which is set above the skyline in the midst of some snowy mountaintops. Zipping through the trees on the ATV over varied terrain, the considerable draw distance meant that the impressive sense of speed generated was always kept in check by how far away your destination actually was.

Almost inevitably, our first goal was the peak of a mountain, just to throw ourselves back down it again. This is where the rider control really comes into its own. By shifting your weight appropriately, every rocky outcrop can be overcome and with some reserve and skill you can even descend near vertical drops intact. This degree of control puts you closer to the experience of a motocross rider, and therefore closer to the actual thrill.

In A Rut

Similarly, the addition of real-time land deformation to the maps has added another dimension to the gameplay that takes this one step closer to a simulation without sacrificing accessibility. While driving around, you leave actual tread marks that get deeper as you go over them and then stay there for the duration of play. But your wheels aren't just sinking into the ground; they're actually displacing tiny, hi-res, specs of dirt so that every rut you make is actually banked on its sides. Rainbow say that in online play up to 12 players will be able to blitz around the maps, permanently deforming the land to their hearts content - cue the YouTube video of six people coordinating to draw a 40ft phallus on the side of a hill using ATVs.

Joking aside, the deformation system really comes to life in a race. As the bikes go round the track, they start to make long ruts along the racing line. During the first lap this is a useful guide for the racing line but, by laps two and three, you can actually use these tracks to 'rail' the bike around the corners at higher speeds. Missing the racing line and driving across them will throw the bike off course and even jog the rider off his bike if you're not paying attention.

Rainbow seems to have polished up the MX vs. ATV franchise this time around. The reflex system, which makes it easier to stay on your bike, looks to have remedied the huge amount of time you spent laying on the ground in previous games. The new controls and deformation system add a layer of realism that allows you to really become immersed in the game and actually feel like a motocross rider. However, like many racing games, this hard work could be undone by poor AI or a lack of variety. Even so, MX vs. ATV Reflex looks like it might take the dirt-bike genre to new levels.
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Q&A session:

Q&A session

Sports-based games are inherently difficult to make. The trouble is the closer developers get to emulating the real thing, the less accessible the game becomes. Take the brilliant GT series from Simbin for example. While this is a must-have game for diehard motorsport fans, it is almost unplayable without a steering wheel and peddles - virtual hara-kiri in terms of accessibility. With MX vs. ATV Reflex, Rainbow is treading the line between an easy-to-pick-up arcade game and a detailed sim.

We talked with the game's Lead Art Director, Ian Wood, about how they've maintained the balance.

TVG: The game feels definitely more like a sim now than ever before - punishing at first, but very rewarding; it actually feels very organic. How did the "fanatics" receive it?

They love it, they absolutely love it. They want more of course; they want their manual gear shifts, their front/rear breaking, and I cannot confirm or deny that that's going in the game but there are some things we will be considering as well. We never actually talked about it being a sim. We always wanted to aim somewhere between arcade and sim. Something that is giving you the essence of what motocross is about but at the same time I'm not the hardcore rider; I want to make the game accessible.

We have diehard fans that are guaranteed to buy this game but we want to open it up a bit more and offer something to the first time user. The organic experience and the easier entry level do that for us. What you saw today was pretty much the hardest of the hard but, believe me, there is a much easier level and a much more accessible way of getting into it.

TVG: How have you gone about creating realistic tracks without licenses for them?

We're more trying to emulate certain styles of all these events, for example we have a level in the desert that was very easy for us to do. We just took a ten minute drive out of the city and we were where we wanted to be with that level. With the one we saw today, the Icarus level, we wanted to really focus on the snow and the deformation, and what better way to do it than at ten thousand feet above the cloud-line. But the supercross courses and the nationals are all based off a combination of track styles.

We really wanted to focus on not just the different surfaces such as clay or sand or slate, but really what those offer up. So without getting too technical about it - believe me I've been bludgeoned by the technicalities of this - but certain nationals will feel more like supercrosses and certain supercrosses will be a little bit more like nationals. Look at the way, for example, in Las Vegas a few years ago they actually raced out of the stadium and went back in again. We're just looking for different ways we can present them.

TVG: So, for your diehard fans, is all the gear going to be up to date and licensed?

All that stuff is licensed. We have all the latest gear: helmets, boots, rider gear and so on. It goes into pretty sick details on that stuff, as well as the parts; they're all licensed. You name it; you look into a motocross catalogue and you'll find it.

TVG: What do you feel this game offers over its predecessors and its competition?

The art has moved on to such an extent this time. Obviously I'm the Art Director so that's what I'm going to push, but it is so much more immersive. The sense of speed is much more intense, created by the frequency of terrain and resolution and even the placement of the trees. We've just been able to capture off-roading a lot better.

TVG: You've decided to alter the controls, with the left analogue controlling the bike, and the right controlling the rider, which makes the game feel a lot more like a sim. What was the thinking behind that decision?

In the previous games we produced the same result with just the left stick, and one of the things we found was that there's actually a lot more to riding a motorbike than just steering or just pushing front and rear weight. For example, last time we had a preload, and a preload metre, which in essence is a spring that you loaded up that would launch you off a jump and it was very unrealistic. In real life people use their body weight to achieve that natural spring. This time we wanted to tie it up in a really nice package to have wreck avoidance, the stop system and how you jump all in one area, so it all made sense. We just separated the rider from the bike, so you have the rider and all his movements totally on the right stick and everything vehicle based is all on the left.

There's so much that goes into riding a bike properly in the dirt. The preload metre only hinted at what you should do on a bike or how you control the weight on the bike. Using the right stick gives a complete range of motion and function: as well as pitching the bike up and down and moving the bike around, we have our rider who's moving, shifting his weight, so there is a nice completeness to it.

TVG: How do you go about working out the physics of how the bike and rider interact? Do you just go to lots and lots of motocross events and put it down as "research"?

In Phoenix Arizona, where the studio is based, we have hardcore motorbike and motocross fanatics who are pushing the gang further and further into the hardcore, but there's a bunch of us who are pushing back to be more accessible. It's a really nice harmony to balance the game with. They are telling us what to look out for and they really push things like the deformation because it makes such a difference in real dirt racing. They really do play up the ruts and we were never able to do that - we always have to paint them in and not actually deform them live.

TVG: The ground deformation system is quite an impressive advance. How much work went into this system and how important was it for you in this iteration of the game?

It's something that is related to dirt racing in general and this is something that we hadn't managed to capture before. In fact, we're fairly disappointed with ourselves for producing lower res terrain in the past. It's all about how you interact with the terrain in dirt racing, whereas in street racing you're on tarmac: it's fixed, so you can get away with a lot more. We really wanted to offer something that's unique to dirt racing and unique to Rainbow. It was actually a piece of tech we'd had around for a while and had never found a nice optical way of getting it into the game, because obviously it's pretty technologically advanced and heavy but we've got some magical people there that managed to get it onto the box.

TVG: Is it just the different weights of the vehicles that will alter the scale of the indentations?

Different weights, absolutely, but different pressures too, so if you hit a jump and hit the ground hard you're going to create more of a lump than if you skip across it. I don't know if you noticed but when the rider's leg hangs out on the snow it leaves a trail, but there's different levels: if his foot is just glancing the snow it's going to leave a smaller trail.

TVG: How detailed is surface of the ground in terms of the resolution of the polygons compared to previous games in the series?

Quite easily ten or more times more detailed. I wish I had the screen shots to show the previous wireframe versus where we are right now - how high resolution it gets. We can set what that resolution is per level - certain levels don't require us to go down to 6 inches of depth and just don't require that kind of detail. In certain events such as supercross, we wanted to protect that resolution a little bit more because it's a smaller event.

TVG: Will different materials like wet mud, snow and gravel act differently in the game?

Yes, every aspect of it is controllable. We control how much each deforms, blend it with a little bit of it, blend it with none at all; it's just how deep you want to go and how wide the deformation track is. It's like a paintbrush that we've used to realistically simulate every surface.

TVG: When you're playing, is there a limit to the amount of havoc you can create with the deformation beyond which the ground starts to reform?

You can stay in free ride worlds for as long as you like and it will deform and deform and deform. Well, it will only go down to a certain level but also remember that you also build dirt up so you never are able to level out the world. The dirt goes somewhere.

TVG would like to thank Ian Wood, MX vs. ATV Reflex's Lead Art Director, for taking the time to speak with us about the game, which is due out at the end of the year on Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, and DS.
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[GB]Screenshots:[/GB]

klik hier voor de screens in high res

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[GB]Trailers:[/GB]

[gt]49323[/gt]

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[GB]Officiële website:[/GB]
www.mxvsatv.com

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[GB]Opmerkingen:[/GB]

Ik hoop dat ze de backflip/360 makkelijker hebben gemaakt, zodat je motor/atv niet blijft doordraaien als je de thumbstick al losgelaten hebt.

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[2k] · 15 mei 2009

Heb Untamned hier nog liggen. Wel wat gespeeld, maar dit soort games houdt ik nooit zo heel lang vol. Denk ook niet dat ik deze game dan ga kopen. Leuk voor even, of om af en toe even te crossen, maar daar blijft het voor mij wel een beetje bij.

Ferron · 15 mei 2009

Vet

Dedemsvaart · 15 mei 2009

Ah, dusky heeft hem toch gemaakt.
Ik wou deze thread vanochtend maken, maar had er geen zin in en ik wist zeker dat Dusky hem ook al zou maken binnenkort

Lijkt me erg tof dit spel.

Dusky Demon NL · 15 mei 2009

Uiteraard maak ik heb Wat een vet spel moet dit worden. Ik heb Untamed ook, maar door de besturing (bijvoorbeeld het supermoeilijke freestyle, wat juist het leukste is) en andere minpunten speel ik hem niet zo vaak.

DulleNL · 16 mei 2009

[gt]49323[/gt]

Dusky Demon NL · 16 mei 2009

Zo te zien staat de motor nu centraler dan in Untamed.

DulleNL · 1 aug 2009

Wat nieuwe screenshots:

Dusky Demon NL · 1 aug 2009

Wel nice. Niet echt vernieuwend though.

DulleNL · 2 aug 2009

Dusky Demon NL · 2 aug 2009

Hmm. Niet echt een duidelijke trailer.

Dedemsvaart · 2 aug 2009

Verschilt gewoons haast niks van Untamned dus deze laat ik mooi liggen....
untamned moet ik ook altijd nog uitspelen btw..,...

WinterBase · 12 aug 2009

[gt]54031[/gt]

Check de naam van die chick....

Dusky Demon NL · 5 okt 2009

[gt]56187[/gt]

Het lijkt dus een beetje op de flickit controls van Skate Hopelijk gaan die backflips nu niet meer zo kut als in Untamed zeg.

[gt]53819[/gt]

Die moddersporen zijn ook wel vet.

DulleNL · 15 okt 2009

[gt]57647[/gt]

Dusky Demon NL · 15 okt 2009

Hij stond hier laatst ook op xbw jah. Maar ik heb hem niet gepost hier omdat ik hem niet vet vind.

DulleNL · 15 okt 2009

Wil je de mensen alleen de goede kanten van de game laten zien zodat ze misschien een miskoop doen?

Trouwens best speciaal dat XBW een keer zo veel sneller is dan GT.

Even opgezocht, en dan nu in het goede format:

Dusky Demon NL · 15 okt 2009

Het spel lijkt me wel vet, ik vond alleen de trailer niet vet En ik moet natuurlijk wel zorgen, dat als ik een spel koop dat er wat kompanen van xbw zijn om mee te spelen

dromped · 15 okt 2009

Ik ga deze ook zeker weer halen. Ik weet dat het niet het allerbeste spel is maar er is zo weinig aanbod in motorcross games.... (enigste)

Untamed heb ik ook helemaal grijs gespeelt ondanks het zeer slechte geluid en soms irritante besturing.

Jorrit010 · 15 okt 2009

dromped zei: ↑

Ik ga deze ook zeker weer halen. Ik weet dat het niet het allerbeste spel is maar er is zo weinig aanbod in motorcross games.... (enigste)

Untamed heb ik ook helemaal grijs gespeelt ondanks het zeer slechte geluid en soms irritante besturing.
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Op de PC had je Motocross Madness...heb ik behoorlijk veel gespeeld Was geen topper, maar zeer vermakelijk.

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