
<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/thearmchairem-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com">	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Racing Publisher Acclaim Developer Climax ESRB E (Everyone) Released Q1 2003

- Good Controls - Imaginative Tracks - Forget physics; I want to land insane jumps!! - Kicking people in the head on an ATV is cool !!!

- Two-player mode is second-rate - Tricks are a bit of a bitch to pull-off - More attention to the sim-like elements of the game would have been nice - Getting kicked in the head hurts

Review: ATV Off-Road Fury 2 (Playstation 2) Review: ATV Quad Power Racing 2 (Gamecube)
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ATV Quad Power Racing 2

Score: 7.5 / 10

Having spent the better part of my life on the back of an ATV, I can vouch for the sheer exhilaration one feels when ripping through landscapes, cityscapes, scapes of all kinds, upon a four-wheeler. I would be plain old telling a lie if I didn’t say that the ATV and I are possessed of that sort of intense mutual love one might only otherwise find with a small domesticated animal. Sadly, I have, as many many gamers have also had, a difficulty in transmuting the reality of my ATV into the world of the video game.

The PS2 has, in the past few months, seen the release of two ATV games; the first, ATV Offroad Fury 2 (released over the Christmas season), was a relatively well-done game. It has a great number of expansive upon which to race/trick/crash, a variation of modes from championship to freestyle to an excellent two-player mode with a variety of engaging multiplayer games. It was also blessed with an online mode. Needless to say, ATV Offroad Fury 2 (hereafter, OR2), while not a perfect game, sets the bar of ATV gaming pretty high.

It is over this bar that ATV Quad Power Racing 2 (or QP2) had (falsely) hoped to delicately hop. QP2, rarely matches and only in a few minor areas does it surpass its competitor. QP2 has a variety of modes – Career, Arcade, Free-style, Challenge and Multi-player – but, with the exception of Challenge mode, the quality of gaming is always surpassed in OR2. The career mode, while allowing the standard tweaking of attributes and the building up of skills, does not have a lot of depth. The freestyle mode takes place in a cool looking arena (complete with a sweet-ass loop-de-loop) but fails to completely engage the gamer; the constraints of the arena, and the difficulty of pulling off the tricks themselves, really pulls down the fun level. I much preferred the freedom of OR2’s huge landscapes. Most disappointing is QP2s two-player mode. It is simply not up the snuff. QP2 lacks all of the cool mini-games found in OR2, but the frame-rate of the game, when racing, actually slows down somewhat when competing against a friend. Freestyle mode is relatively free of this maddening bug but this is little consolation. The frenzied fun of two-player competition is, whether through graphical and game-play quirks or lack of variety, not truly found here.

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I do not meant to imply that this game is a complete throw-away. It has many positive qualities. The handling of the bike is good (you can really feel the difference when racing upon different surfaces); the AI is competitive without seeming unfair, challenge mode (which test the precision of your driving and ability to pull off some of the more interesting tricks) is a nice imaginative break from the standard one-player modes; the tracks are highly imaginative and fun to look at as well as race upon. Most importantly, QP2 is not afraid to play up its more arcade-like

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qualities. Landing insanely huge jumps, kicking opponents in the head, executing ridiculous stunts (such as forwards and/or backwards flips) are all decidedly impossible in OR2, are decidely possible in QP2. This denial of physical realities is, in fact, what ultimately saves QP2 from total mediocrity. Launching yourself off a huge sand-dune, kicking a competitor off their ride mid-air, and launching into a trick – all in the same sequence – makes for undeniable fun. Had the developers chosen to play these aspects up more, the game may have been a lot better off…but that is just my opinion.

QP2 is a decent game with some serious flaws that matter so much more because another game (OR2) very conceptually similar, offers a lot more and does not make as many mistakes. If one had to buy an ATV racer for the PS2, I would suggest ATV Offroad Fury 2; it gives you a lot more bang for your buck. However, if you’re the type of person more inclined to the simplicities of Road Rash over the nuances and depth of, let’s say, Grand Turismo, than ATV Quad Power Racing 2 may be for you.

As for me, after writing this review I am ready for some real ATV racing. Nothing will ever compare to the visceral experience of having one of those bad boys really purring between your thighs…wait… that didn’t come out right… dammit…

- Curtis Andrews

(March 5, 2003)