Upon receipt of this little piece of plastic from my friends at Katastrophe, I was quite excited for a game offering the deranged thrill of racing four wheeled all terrain vehicles through different environments at parapalegia risking speeds. After a few minutes of the disc in the PSX, my enthusiasm was gone - completely. I played the game for several days to give it a fair shake and to see if an improvement of my skills and an unlocking of secrets would improve my first impression of the game. It did not. The premise of this game is solid: a racing game for vehicles which are more nimble that cars and more stable than mere motorcycles and able to handle the kind of terrain that would shred an ordinary vehicle. Unfortunately, the game does not live up to the premise.

The problem lies in the gameplay, less than mediocre graphics, poor handling, repetitive and forgettable sound, and lousy graphics. On the plus side, the game has a very nice interface that allows a player to pick from a variety of modes from arcade to head-to-head to a full racing season. In addition, players then pick from a variety of ATVs with differing handling characteristics their ATV. Next the player chooses a racer whose physical characteristics presumably interact with the ATV in some way to affect gameplay. As the vehicles lumber through their bland environment like a freezing ice cream scoop through a solid deep frozen block of Breyers, I was unable to discern this interaction. Finally, the player chooses from the desert, winter, or forest environments in which to race.

The race is on through rolling valleys of occasional playing card trees and shrubs (or in the desert - cacti) and an occasional building or fence thrown in for good measure. Even though these are "all terrain vehicles", they are confined to a narrow track regardless through which of the three oddly similar environments they are racing. The game runs fast, I'll give it that. Of course, the frame rate is not surprising given the dearth of items to render on the tracks. Straying off the track while it may result in a cut corner and perhaps a brief advantage over a competitor, usually results in striking a tree or other obstacle which results in slowing, but not a crash. Passing to close to another rider or bumping one from behind, on the other hand, will most certainly result in a spill from the ATV and a delay while your rider resets his vehicle. There is no damage to the vehicles over time, nor can smaller obstacles be driven through or over - but perhaps I'm just being picky. Anyway, three or so laps of this and the race is over.

It is hard to be constructive in reviewing the gameplay, because I can think of some many ways to have improved the gameplay. As I've said, though the framerate is high, the vehicles respond only sluggishly, which makes them hard to negotiate through the tight course. And why is the course so narrow? Granted, there are hardware limitations, but ATVs would seem to lend themselves to finding there way freestyle to a goal, rather than the "canyon" through which they must race in this game. Nor is there the feel of an ATV as it rips through the undergrowth under a canopy of old growth trees squashing squirrels that makes the actual riding of ATVs such naughty fun in the first place

How much control does an ATV need? Acceleration and braking as well as the ability to lean would seem to be the basics. The game has these and the rider leans as he corners. Leaning did not seem to result in greater stability or turn faster. Additionally, use of the analog sticks did not seem to result in any advantage. Truthfully, the response of the vehicles to their control is so sluggish that it is hard to say whether this is a control or gameplay flaw. If you desire more complexity, you can have a manual shirt.

The game zips along quite nicely and the environment whips by too. Of course, as there is vary little variety in the environment, that's no surprise. The colors are bland and run together sufficiently at the high framerate, to make distinguishing the various elements of riders and obstacles difficult. This problem makes it further difficult to follow the proposed path through the course where the rider is not confined in an obvious half-pipe or canyon. Additionally, the perspective of overhead does little to emphasize the 3D nature of the game as would a through-the-helmet perspective. The courses themselves lack variety and though there are additional areas on the three environments to unlock, this does little to mitigate the overall blandness of the environments. Better and more varied environments would go along way to mitigating the boredom, even if this resulted in a drop in the framerate. The graphics are on par with an average 1st generation PSX game, I suppose.

The vehicles make the right noises as they accelerate, but there wasn't much else other than the entirely forgettable usual "bland-no" music in the background. No sound of skids or crashes or bushes or the sounds of the woodland being disturbed, despoiled, and destroyed or the screams of the riders as they some out of the seat. (Hey, these vehicles kill people regularly. There ought to be some sort of sound to remind you that crashing one of these ATVs out in the woods is painful, if not fatal, not to mention the general damage and environmental havoc that they cause.)

Unless this game is actually a secret experiment by the environmental groups to turn off America's youth from the sport of ATV racing and the environmental mayhem that accompanies it, this game misses the mark badly. Bland and boring, this is a game to avoid unless you are the most rabid of ATV racing fans, tanked out of your mind on Schlitz, and have precious little else to do.