MX World Tour: Featuring Jamie Little – XB – Review

MX World Tour: Featuring Jamie
Little is the latest motocross title to hit the market, following hot on the
heels of THQ’s great hybrid racing title, MX vs. ATV Unleashed. While the game
does feature some nice elements like realistic physics and an endorsement by
famous commentator Jamie Little, much of the game’s racing formula feels a
little too generic and won’t do much to hold your attention, especially
considering that there are much more capable titles on the market.

In MX World Tour, you’ll race
against eleven other racers through 30 different tracks and circuit types. As
you progress through the game’s courses, you can earn upgrades for your bikes
and handle the tracks better.

The controls are pretty standard for
a MX racing game. The physics are somewhat realistic, allowing you to hug turns
and work your jump landings in order to not slow down too much when you hit the
ground. You can perform power slides and things of that nature in order to get
ahead of your opponents. However, much of what MX World Tour does has been done
before, and better, by other motocross racing games. The tracks, while
progressively more difficult as the game moves on, are pretty similar and don’t
do a lot to hold attention.

The game also lacks a trick system,
which costs it some replay points. While it can be argued that the game is
strictly a racing game and doesn’t need to be cluttered with the performance of
tricks, the straightforward racing in the game can grow quite boring before too
long given the lack of diversity in the courses.

The game offers up a few multiplayer
features, including XBox Live support, which is an improvement over its offline
PS2 counterpart. If online play isn’t your bag, then the game also has a
two-player split-screen mode. 

Graphically, the game is not a
representation of what the XBox is fully capable of. The tracks have a real
murky quality to them and lack much texture and detail. The racers don’t look
very good either, looking as though they’d be better off on a first-generation
PS2 game than an XBox game. While there are some special effects, like motion
blur effect when you land a jump, these are kept to a minimum throughout the
game’s barebones graphical presentation. The crash animations are also very
overdone and just look overly ridiculous when your racer bails. On the plus
side, the game does have a fairly smooth and steady framerate.

The sound side doesn’t fare much
better than the graphics department. The game features the voice of Jamie
Little, a well-known extreme sports commentator. However, her talents are pretty
squandered here, as she tends to repeat the same things over and over again and
doesn’t capture the punch of the game’s races. The soundtrack is primarily
composed of generic nu-metal, and does grow a little weary before too long, even
if you are a metal fan.

MX World Tour is a fairly barebones
racing game that doesn’t bring anything new to the table. If you are looking for
a great motocross game, MX Unleashed is a good way to go, or even MX vs. ATV
Unleashed if you’d like to mix it up a little bit. Unfortunately, MX World Tour
is just too plain to recommend. 

Gameplay: 6.5
From the controls
to the tracks, MX World Tour is a very barebones and plain presentation of the
world of motocross racing.

Graphics: 6.0
Considering other
titles in the genre and what the XBox is capable of, MX World Tour is an average
looking MX game at best. The tracks lack detail and fall prey to murky textures
and the racers are simple looking and have outrageously overdone crash
animations. The special effects are also kept to a minimum, making the game
quite plain looking overall.

Sound: 6.5
The sound
department has some promise, with established extreme sports commentator Jamie
Little providing some announcing as well as her endorsement of the game.
Unfortunately, her lines are quite lacking and grow repetitious before too long.
The metal soundtrack also lacks diversity and gets annoying quickly.

Difficulty:  Medium

Concept: 6.0 
By providing a
simple and barebones approach to MX racing, MX World Tour just doesn’t bring it
to the table when compared to other superior motocross racing titles.

Multiplayer: 6.5
The game features
online support via XBox Live, which makes it a marked improvement over the PS2
version, which has no online support at all. However, any fun you have playing
the game online will be limited by the generic gameplay.

Overall: 6.5

When
compared to other MX racing games out there, the average gameplay in MX World
Tour just doesn’t bring its A-game to the table.