Renegade Kid is back again, this time with ATV Wild Ride 3D, a racing game full of crazy tricks, tracks, music, and speed! Originally developed for the DS as a retail title, ATV Wild Ride hit some bumps in the rode and while it earned favorable reviews, ended up with some poor sales. Not to be deterred, Renegade Kid put their source code on the back burner until the right opportunity presented itself – that opportunity was the eShop. Now, we have ATV Wild Ride 3D, an enhanced port of the DS original, at a fraction of the cost. Will ATV Wild Ride 3D take you to new heights of excitement and fun, or will it wipe-out?
Story and Plot
Yeah, so if you’re looking for a story, don’t. There isn’t one. Nope. It’s Chuck Testa! Uh…I mean, it’s a racing game, you don’t need a story! Seriously, just get back on your ATV and move on to the Gameplay and Controls section already.
Gameplay and Controls
Gameplay is split into 3 parts, Single Player, Internet Play, and Local Play. There is a tutorial of course, which consists of 4 or 5 simple pages with some images and text telling you how to drive and perform tricks. Single Player has four different options to choose from, with World Tour being the most robust choice. There is also Quick Race, Freestyle, and Time Trial to choose from.
World Tour consists of six tours, each one spanning the globe. Other than the first tour, the remaining tours are initially locked. In order to unlock them, you must earn points by competing in tours. Depending on which place you wind up in at the end of a race, your earned points vary. So, unless you end up in first every race, you may need to compete in a tour more than once before unlocking the next tour. For instance, I have completed the first 4 tours and have a total of 84 points. Tour 5 doesn’t unlock until I acquire 112 points, so I need to compete in Tour 4 at least one more time before moving on.
Being that speed is the most important element of racing, what’s a racing game without some form of boost, right? In AWR3D, you’ll perform tricks which when successfully landed, earn you nitro. Tricks are performed anytime you get air, by pressing L, R, or both L+R in combination with a direction on the circle or d-pad. Quick tricks are performed with the L button, Medium tricks with the R button and Long tricks with the L+R combination. You have a nitro meter on the bottom of the top screen which has five bars. In order to use nitro, you must have at least one full bar. Quick tricks earn you half a bar, Medium tricks earn a full bar, and Long tricks earn you a whopping 2 full bars! Now, before you go on thinking you can just spam the same move over and over to earn nitro, think again. If you spam a trick in the same lap, you will not earn additional nitro. You must wait until the next lap to earn nitro for said trick. Of course, there are a total of 24 different tricks you can perform, so you shouldn’t repeat a trick too often. Now, a cool little addition which helps you get even more air, is preloading. Preloading is done by holding down at the bottom of a hill and right before you get to the top, push up to preload and gain massive air. This will really help you out as you attempt to pull off some crazy tricks.
Woohoo!
The locations vary, not only in visuals, but also in layout. You will find yourself racing on the same tracks as before, except the layout will either be Normal, Reverse, Extended, or Extended Reverse. This was a really smart move on Renegade Kid’s part, as they were able to reuse assets without making the game stale. Each tour consists of four races, some of which are as simple as racing, others are elimination races (last place is eliminated at the start of the next lap), and then there are even freestyle races (your rank is determined by your trick points earned.) Between the types of races you’ll be competing in, and the various forms and locales of tracks, there is a lot of content in World Tour alone.
I really don’t need to go into much more detail for Quick Race, Freestyle, or Time Trial as they all perform the same as World Tour. However, the key difference is that you can adjust the settings for each race in these sections. In all 3 of these, you can adjust the number of racers, number of laps, CPU difficulty, style of race, and track layout.
Online play is where the fun continues as you race against your friends, or anyone else. You can either host your own game or join one being hosted. All the same rules apply here and you have leaderboards for bragging rights. Plus, you can even race against the developer, Jools Watsham, himself. Just follow him on Twitter and challenge him to a match!
Look Ma! No hands!
Graphics and Sound
The graphics in ATV Wild Ride 3D are fairly good looking and the frame-rate is a consistent 60 FPS, which is always a plus, especially in a racing game. There are times were the visuals get a little muddy. I actually thought I saw a shortcut on one level, but in fact it turned out to be just the track’s graphics. I swear, it really looked like I could drive into this tunnel, which turned out to be the wall. Seriously though, while the visuals won’t blow you away, they certainly do look good and make for an enjoyable racing experience. There is also an option called the Trick cam which when performing a trick, places the camera in front of and facing towards your rider. This effect only lasts for 2 or 3 seconds, but it can become an issue as you aren’t able to see the road ahead. I ended up turning it off for that very reason, but I enjoyed using it from time to time.
The audio is also good, but limited. The music tracks, which I classify as punk or punk rock, are provided by Swift Justice and the Hired Goons, and they all sound really good. However, there are only 6 songs, so you’ll hear them again and again. Although, regardless of how many times I hear the songs, I never get tired of them. The sound effects heard throughout the races are also repetitive, but just as enjoyable. I always enjoy hearing my rider shout “Woohoo!” as I use my nitro boost. Overall, the audio is repetitive, but thankfully it is enjoyable. Go ahead and check out the link for the band where you can preview and even purchase the songs. For those of you who may not like that some of the audio is repetitive, you can switch music tracks, turn off rider vocals, and disable the trick cam within a race.
Trick cam!
Final Score: 9 out of 10
ATV Wild Ride 3D is an excellent racing game, loaded with tricks, tracks, punk rock, unlockables (riders and atv’s), leaderboards, multiplayer, and speed! Seriously this game is a lot of fun! Renegade Kid took a full retail title, enhanced it visually, slapped on extra content and now they’re practically giving it away for free, sorta ($7.99.) If you’re looking for a fun and challenging racing game, look no further. I highly suggest you buy ATV Wild Ride 3D and get riding now!
Check out a gameplay video narrated by Jools himself!
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