Gaming is a world where character and personality mean everything. There are just too many generic shooters and dreary strategy games to merit even a mild glance at anything that does not sparkle with life. Originality, shine and creativity identify the games that have true individuality; the ones that scream out to us offering bounteous gaming treats that have not been spat out of an industrial mouth several million times already.

On paper, MX Vs. ATV Unleashed would seem to be one of those joyously carefree gaming romps. It tries to do what TOCA did to road racing, but in an off-road environment. There are heaps of buggies, quad bikes, dirt bikes, even a bi-plane for goodness sake, and you zoom these around oodles of muddy tracks full of jumps and death-defying leaps of faith. But upon an extended examination, the game does seem to be somewhat... soulless.

The options open to you are quite simply multitudinous. There are race modes such as supermoto, short track, hill climb and waypoint as well as an assortment of free-world challenges, freestyle competitions, and a variety of mini games. Then you have the choice to do all this in quick races, single player, a full fledged selection of championships and even a multiplayer option that allows up to eight people online to compete head-to-head.

Now if the game continued to follow TOCA's footsteps in the same vein of production, things would have been very interesting. However, things now depart from such inspiration and veer onto the path of arcade racing. This is evinced by many things, not least the vehicle handling. Such superfluous fripperies as grip and turning circle are happily flung aside to present a racing experience that can be mastered simply by using the arrow keys and half your attention span. Marginal use of skill or driving capabilities is required in any of the modes.

Then you have the AI, who have the curse of catch up. Whenever you are lagging behind, they will gladly set out a picnic and wait for you to get back into the pack before resuming their pace. But the second you start to nudge ahead of the rest, they will engage ultra-drive and achieve phenomenal speeds and jumps in order to keep up with you and overtake you. At which point they will slow down and wait again. Sure, it keeps you in the action all the time, but it robs the experience of any pretence it has to proper real-life racing.

Then you have the drab, simplistic and distinctly uninspiring maps that are devoid of any real life or character. Scenery is very limited, with little effort made to spruce up the fairly bland surroundings. The music is relatively limited, sporting a small variety of tracks to chunder through, and all in the same style, which could become irritating for some. Your vehicle also has a rather nasty tendency to throw you at random moments. Of course, you will be sent flying if you completely screw up a jump or something, but the game also likes to throw you off at sporadic intervals without cause. Then when you get into the stadiums and try to pull off some neat tricks, there is an auto-dismount catch in your vehicle that restricts you from leaning forwards or backwards more than 45 degrees without flinging you humiliatingly down to the dirt. For a game that is so bluntly arcadised, such pointless restrictions are almost laughable in their ineffable futility.

It must be admitted that there are some rather neat distractions that can entertain you for a few hours though. First up is the fact that you get to fly old bi-planes at various stages in the game. Why would you do that? Hell knows! But it certainly does add a tinge of insanity to the whole experience of what should technically be an off-road experience. Then you have the simply superb map boundaries. Not being content with impassable cliffs of invisible walls to prevent the racer leaving the field of play, there is instead some kind of amazing electro-cannon effect, which activates when you pass a certain boundary. The result is an absolutely enormous explosion that sends you hundreds of metres into the air and about half a mile back into the map. It is actually the most fun part of the entire game and I spent many hours experimenting with how far I could get myself blasted into oblivion and what horribly painful contortions I could get my little racer to emulate.

MX Vs. ATV Unleashed does nothing drastically wrong, it just fails to do anything drastically right. It is a moderately entertaining racer, sure, but is too lightweight to inspire any long-term appeal. There are plenty of game modes to try, but all will become stale long before you have completed them.

Reviewed by Adam Shirley for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).