Mad Riders: Game Review

Are the days of buying games down at the local store over? When instant-action racing games like Mad Riders cost around $10, some people might nod their heads and say "yes, and I'm hungry too, got any chips?"

Forget the box, the manual, and all the stuff you normally get when buying a new game - you just download this one from the net, about 1.4Gb in total, and away you go.

Yes it is four wheel racing, but in the case of Mad Riders we are talking about quad bike racing in crazy jungle locations at speeds that will make your head to spin. Mad Riders forces players to either rely on exceptional reaction at high speeds or rote learning of tracks in order to progress.

Mad Riders provides a little something for everybody.  Certainly there is a racing challenge even for single players, as the AI of the computer controlled opponents may not be the cleverest in picking a racing line through the mud, but there's online multiplayer modes too, and everything moves fairly rapidly to keep the racing exciting. 

The game puts an emphasis on big-air, stunts such as flips, whips and the precise landing of extremely large jumps, and it's not hard to learn the basics. If you want a game that is easy to pick up and play, you could do a lot worse than this.

There are eight different environments (and multiple tracks within each) that provide ample opportunity to boost experience points, and these in turn allow for level upgrades. You can buy new, more powerful or agile vehicles and because this is a downloaded game, there's very little load times, so if you stuff up and stack it, trying again is not so, errrm, trying.

New bikes are rated on horsepower and boost as well as traction, stunt agility and air steering.  Yep, air steering!!  Mad Riders does not profess to be physics accurate (we are talking about a pure arcade racer here), as it allows the navigation through extreme environments that would be impossible in real life.

Track design is for the most-part impressive, with crazy non-symmetry the order of the day.  I did find a few frustrating moments where some dead-end (glitched?) paths lead to automatic re-spawns, but with a bit of practice the best racing-line for each challenge can be found.  This includes opening secret short-cuts or calling on extra boost tokens to outpace rivals.

Mad Riders is no Motorstorm, however.  Graphically the game (running on the Chrome Engine 4) is adequate with no real modern day visual bells or whistles, the audio is pretty good with the roar/buzz of small capacity engines captured in a satisfactory way. But even little things such as the whump of a tropical plant being hit at full speed is nicely incorporated into the mix.

There is a smattering of different events apart from pure racing, such as arena based checkpoint rallies and solo 'time trial' inspired racing against the clock. There's also the 'race a pro' ghost rider modes during a single player tournament.

Multiplayer on the other hand, does not involve a delineated race as such.  Instead each event is able to be dropped into at the flick of a button, where players will have a fixed time period to record the fastest lap possible. For a game like this that provides short, sharp thrills rather than prologued gaming sessions, it works a treat.

Thankfully the game ramps up the hardware available in multiplayer modes as well, with Competition Class Quads available.

It's a shame there's no split screen, but the online stuff works well enough, fleshing out the game somewhat.

To conclude, Mad Riders lives up to its name - it is a frantic challenge of speed and craziness in a wild setting. Yes, it suffers from some of the issues that plague similar titles, for example the detection that you are off-track and require auto–spawning is not too lenient. And it does not profess to be any kind of simulation, staying firmly in the arcade fun class, but it's easy to play, satisfying to pull off mad tricks and represents good value for money, costing about the same toll road fine.

Good old fashioned arcade fun that won't break the bank.

Platform: PC, PS3, Reviewed on Xbox 360
Developer: Techland
Publisher: Ubisoft