In ATV 2, gamers hop once again into the bouncy seat of a tricked-out all-terrain vehicle to race, jump and pull stunts over more than a dozen off-road tracks. As in most of the recent extreme-sports games, ATV 2 places a premium of big air, impossible tricks and all sorts of attitude. Yet unlike many of those extreme titles, ATV 2 fails to offer any significant innovation in gameplay, plot or features. The game also seems to have trouble deciding whether it wants to be an arcade racer or stunt-racing sim, which in the end leaves you feeling as though it doesn’t quite hit its mark.

Gameplay
ATV 2 makes off-road racing very approachable, with a basic control scheme that couldn’t be any easier: one button to accelerate, one to brake, one to activate your boost and one to jump (“preload”). Where the true challenge comes in is the trick system.

Executing tricks is easy on paper. While in the air, you press a direction on the D-pad and simultaneously press one of the face buttons. Depending on the direction you press, you’ll execute a different stunt, with higher-scoring tricks unlocked as you advance in the game. Pulling off tricks and stringing them together is also imperative to increase your boost, which is quickly depleted and only regenerates with a successful trick.

Yet timing your stunts just right can require Zen-like patience. Pressing the D-pad and face buttons simultaneously is sometimes hit or miss, and stringing together combinations is often as much a matter of double-jointed fingers as it is sheer luck with the controls’ responsiveness. If you don’t complete the trick training before beginning a career, you should be prepared to pad your walls for massive bouts of controller throwing.

Fortunately, if you’re consistent with at least three tricks, you’re pretty much assured that you’ll have a stellar career. That’s because ATV 2 ranks players on their cumulative points for both time and tricks, and until the later stages of the game, your AI opponents don’t pull off nearly enough tricks to keep pace with you. While some people might say this “unbalanced” aspect is a gameplay flaw, it actually makes ATV 2 feel like an arcade racer from years past.

Ironically, though, you’ll find in those very same races that the AI opponents don’t act as you’d expect in an arcade racer. Why? Namely, because they can actually race. If you’ve ever played MotoGP or driven long distances to a college football game, you’re familiar with wolf pack behavior. Kill or be killed. First to last in 3.6 seconds. Champ to chump in no time flat. Whatever the cliché, you get the picture. The racers in ATV 2 operate the same way, with maybe one slacker per outing. The AI simply has no mercy on the weak, and until you unlock a few of the upgraded ATVs, you may find yourself relying on tricks just to stay in the hunt for a top world ranking.

Presumably the “extreme” aspects of ATV 2 come from the bikini-clad racers and ability to kick your opponents from their bikes. Quite frankly, the game could’ve forgone both and been no different. Seldom will you be kicked from your ATV, and rarely will you be close enough to boot someone from his or hers without crashing in a tangled heap. About the closest you’ll come to violence is landing on top of someone after a jump, and that’s far from premeditated.

ATV 2 has nine gameplay modes altogether: Academy (control and trick training), Career, Single Race, Arcade, Freestyle (a stuntman’s heaven), Challenge, Time Trial, Custom (a player-created championship available after completing the career mode) and Multiplayer. Career mode offers the best opportunity to unlock new ATVs, riders and tricks, but Arcade is the option that presents the most fun.

Oddly enough, what was supposed to be an “upgrade” for the Xbox version, four-player split-screen multiplayer, is actually that version’s most glaring weakness. The action and obstacles in ATV 2 move by at blazing speeds, which is fantastic for full-screen racing but can be difficult to follow on just one quarter of a shared screen. Two-player split screen is much easier to track, and therefore much more enjoyable, regardless of the version you’re playing.

Graphics
ATV 2 is a mixed bag in the graphics department. Each ATV is fantastically animated, with the suspension reacting to subtle bumps in the terrain and the over-inflated tires bouncing the bike around as you’d expect in real life. Even the little touches weren’t forgotten, with dissipating exhaust, tires that leave tracks in the mud and treads that actually change color in real-time to reflect their cleanliness (or lack thereof).

The ATV riders, on the other hand, aren’t nearly as detailed, and their animations are rather unvaried and weak. To Acclaim’s credit, the game does include the Bikini Biker Babes popular in some of the latest extreme-sports titles, but you’ll seldom take notice of them with the levels and opponents demanding your utmost concentration.

The level design is great, and several tracks provide more than one route to take toward the finish line. The level variety is also quite nice, with the 15 levels spread from a tropical beach to a barren glacier to a rain-soaked junkyard. But what ATV 2 has in variety and design, it’s generally lacking in distinction. The details and deformable objects are all there, but the color scheme used in each level is amazingly monochromatic. What’s more, aside from the tracks you’ll leave with your ATV, the textures leave something to be desired. It’s not a big omission, given that the tracks move by quickly anyway, but it can make finding and staying on the track difficult, especially in four-player multiplayer games on the Xbox.

Sound
Imagine the whine of a rally car trying to overcome a soundtrack of seven heavy metal songs, and you’ve pretty much nailed down ATV 2. If you were riding an ATV while listening to your headphones, this is probably how it would sound. And aside from the opening cut scenes, environmental sounds are essentially relegated to the whine of other ATVs. In that sense the sound is realistic, but not one effect or song will leave you wanting to pump up the volume. Custom soundtracks (on the Xbox version) would have increased this game’s audio appeal ten-fold, and on the other versions, you may want to hit mute on the TV and pop in your favorite CD.

Replayability
Several ATVs are only unlocked after winning enough gold medals or completing certain modes, and your increase in performance on those ATVs definitely provides motivation to keep playing. Unfortunately, the in-game racing feels extremely railed, so no matter how well you race or how much Big Air you grab, you won’t be able to do so off the beaten path. Given the off-road nature of the game, that would’ve increased the replayability significantly. If the game’s going to upset the Sierra Club, it should at least do it in a big way by letting gamers tear up the entire environment.

The multiplayer options in ATV 2 slightly extend the life of the title, but as I mentioned earlier, the four-player split-screen on the Xbox is more of a detractor from that version than a bonus. Two-player trick challenges are the way to go; they really accentuate the game’s arcade appeal.

Overall
ATV 2 is the most recent in a long line of racing titles that use different vehicles to do the same things. With that said, it’s the sequel to a popular PlayStation title, so the game can’t be dinged for being a “me too” newbie. If the game had focused on over-the-top action and implemented easier trick controls, it would have stood alone in the extreme arcade racer category. The SSX Tricky of racing, for example. Likewise, if it had taken itself more seriously and done away with the bikinis and heavy metal, it could have ranked slightly better in the category of “serious racer with a unique vehicle.”

As it is, ATV 2 provides several hours of fun and a worthwhile weekend rental for fans of the original. With a little more focus on what the game hoped to be, an arcade racer or a racing sim, ATV 2 could have been a hands-down champ. In its current form, it’ll have to settle for playing catch up with the rest of the pack and doing tricks just to stay in the hunt.

See more screens in the ATV 2 media page