ATV: Quad Power Racing

The impressive 3D objects and textured roads look like something out of a Playstation One title - pretty good! Your seven opponents are equally spaced out on each track, and you can employ power-ups to overtake them. Speed boosts are the most useful, and others give you extra "air" or allow you to "stick" to the road. My biggest issue with the game is its password save feature. It's bad enough you have to write down a password, but instead of letters, the passwords are composed of odd symbols! ATV isn't great, but its clean visuals and fair difficulty managed to hold my attention.

Overall, I am sad to say that this game wasn’t more of what it definitely could have been. Even with the great graphics and all the fun of ATV racing, the overall gameplay and length cause it to run out of gas at the finish line. If you’re a fan of ATV racing or riding, you might get more enjoyment out of this title than others, but I would still recommend to buy with caution.

Looks aren’t every thing and while Quad Power Racing has got the looks, there is really nothing much else there. The lack of a battery save and multiplayer are annoying and with its lack luster racing action players would do well to look elsewhere for their racing fix.

Which lesser of two evils was ATV born from: a tech demo of some good scrolling, or the need to bring the series to the Game Boy Advance? The game hardly distinguishes itself otherwise. Your ride’s handling is fun as you slip in and out of curves, but the racing itself is rather pedestrian. The title’s difficulty is so easy that I almost finished the game without ever losing a race. Whip donuts in the dirt with your ATV if you want to go in circles; just don’t play this game.

As impressed as I am with the game's graphic quality, I can't say I'm thrilled with the gameplay. Other than the impressive game engine, the design of ATV is extremely low-frills with very little challenge or variety. The first circuit is a breeze to blow through, and it was only midway through circuit two where I actually lost my first race. Circuit three was a bit more difficult to beat, but the technique of remembering power-up locations made it a lot easier to win. The lack of cartridge save, link cable support, and any real challenge makes it hard to recommend this admittedly slick-looking racer.

Ever since the Game Boy Advance released more than a year ago, the handheld system has housed a number of racing games that never seem to cease production. To vary a player’s experience, developers have sought out options such as creating racers with a slightly altered premise just like they have seen done on the home consoles in order to compensate for similar over produced genres. From this, we receive an assortment of racing types including motorbike, rally, kart, and now ATV. Acclaim is leading the way with ATV Quad Power Racing and because of that, has somewhat of an edge on the four-wheel off-road racing action. Despite this fact and the impressive appearance the game’s screenshots initially give, ATV falls short of anything remarkable, only to end up falling in with so many others.

What more is there to say? Don't even think about picking up ATV: Quad Power Racing. This game must have been in development for a whole two weeks, either that, or it's a left over first generation PSX title. In a more direct manner of speaking, the game's crap with a capitol "C"... ah, capitalize the whole word. Please, do something more productive with your time than wasting it with this title.

ATV Quad Power Racing looks great and that's it. Although no single aspect of this game is terrible, the overall package is unquestionably dull and limited.

While there may be some ATV enthusiasts out there who will get enough out of ATV: Quad Power Racing to warrant a rental, those who are only mildly into the sport will be disappointed by the game's repetitive graphics, steep learning curve, and overall lack of variety or fun.

To finish this review, I will notify everybody that ATV: Quad Power Racing has been destroyed, processed through the trash compactor, then thrown into the recycling bin. I'm sorry Acclaim, Dave Mirra may have been great, but ATV is trash, this is another big waste of money, instead of picking up ATV, use that for either Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX or save it for PS2. Awful visuals, awful gameplay, ultimately horrible sound, with lackluster control and little to no replay value show that ATV: Quad Power Racing was obviously rushed.

Acclaim steps to the line to publish Climax's ATV: Quad Power Racing, an off-road ATV racer that will sap the happiness and energy out of all who play it.

I ain't getting' cranky in my old age, I just expect more from the developers and publishers when it comes to anything they offer the consumer that costs money. The damn game should, at least, be fun right? If any other company has tackled trying to do a 4-wheel racer and has met with similar results, I can understand why this one is billed as, "...the only Quad racer in the world, period." Perhaps this means that unlike, Quarterback Club 2000 and 2001, they won't actually try this again? Well, let's hope for now anyway. We'll see what they can do to revive this lame duck next time.

Simply put, ATV Quad Power Racing an exhaustingly awful game with programming you'd expect to see in a flash movie and tracks that were probably made with a half-finished level editor from a freeware site. Exhume the ET carts from its landfill sepulchre, or at least make some room next to it, because there is no reason for garbage like this to exist in the range of human decency and no place for it on our planet's immediate surface. Absolutely pathetic.