MAVRIX by Matt Jones

Something just feels off with this, unfortunately. Graphics are lacking any real art direction and animations are lacking in flow. Speaking of animations, that's all you get in terms of control over the bike - everything you do on the bike besides steering is all scripted animations triggered by 'gestures' with the control sticks rather than 'free' physics-based control over the bike with regards to scrubs, whips, boosting, squashing, flips, tricks, bunnyhops etc. The tracks range from okay to quite good, with some challenging sections and meaningful choice of lines to be found, and some of the tracks are recognisable from real life, though there's not as many of them as I'd expect and the open world feels rather empty and devoid of life or anything meaningful to see or do outside of the tracks themselves. Riding between tracks and chair lifts feels like a sign-following chore rather than fun exploration. The events and races are fun, and the integration of worldwide leaderboards for each event is a really good addition, there will be a skill gap emerging between players based on line choice and speed carried, but races can quickly turn frustrating when you get flung off your bike randomly mid-run or suddenly reset for cutting while still well within the taped track limits. The game does have a career mode where you unlock new sponsors, but I've not played enough yet to be able to comment on this. The bike selection appears to be lacking - you can choose between an enduro bike and a downhill bike. That's it, no sign of any slopestyle bikes despite slopestyle being one of the two event types in the game. The cosmetics are cool, you can spend your earned 'moolah' on new jerseys, pants, shoes, helmets, goggles, gloves and Marin bike skins. You have to spend your 'moolah' to buy fast travel points though, which seems like an odd choice until you discover the 'buy currency' shop where you can spend quite a lot of your real world money for in-game money. The best part of the game is the general vibe - Rob Warner commentating your race runs and Matt Jones talking you through the tutorial is really cool, and the 'Jones Bros Radio' is a cool touch and adds some life to the game. The soundtrack is subjectively good too, with some cool licensed music to vibe to as you ride. Performance-wise the game is underwhelming. For how it looks, it should be running much more smoothly than it is. For reference, I'm on an RTX 4090, and have to enable DLSS Quality and drop some of the settings from Epic to High to keep it smooth at all times. Not ideal. All in all, there's fun to be had here but I'm still waiting for a really great MTB game to be made. Skaters and Motocross riders have been eating well over the years (please, developers, for the love of god, look at what made the likes of Skate and MX vs ATV Reflex so good!), but MTB has yet to have any truly excellent games that capture the feeling of actually riding in an authentic and satisfying way. Riders' Republic is basically this game but less janky and with loads more to do so I'd probably recommend that over this. I'd certainly look at Cranked and Descenders first before this as well.