ome gamers may see ATV titles as something their little brothers play on a hand-me-down PS2, but in a year filled with good (and some great) racers, MX vs. ATV Untamed holds its own. What it may lack in revolutionary features it makes up for on the tracks where speed, skill, and surprises are not in short supply.

Developer Rainbow Studios has already perfected its brand of racing, incorporating split-second timing and controlled racing at high speeds, and this has allowed it to hit the ground running here in the next generation. Combine this with how fast this game can feel and the good-looking graphics, and you have a title that has better off-road racing than Dirt (excluding that game’s rally portion).

I just wish Rainbow hadn’t stopped with good enough. The game’s tracks are very well done, but I was disappointed that there were times where Untamed’s expansive environments weren’t better utilized. I loved Opencross, but hated that the tracks repeated after five races. Supposedly open-ended Waypoint races go in circles(?!) instead of taking off into the wild and having you explore the huge tracts of land already created. When you do explore the game in Free Ride, you’ll only come across many of these same tracks you’ve already raced. Add in the fact that you often have to re-race tracks in second motos (which are like heats), and it feels like Untamed is more of a slave to convention than it has to be – something that isn’t erased by the fact that the X-Cross career structure lets you pick which circuits you want to race.

With such a strong racing foundation at its core, I expect the next Rainbow MX vs. ATV title to even further utilize what it already has in front of it. Untamed is good racing, but it needs to dig deeper within itself to deliver up to its potential.