ATV offroad fury 4

The ATVs are a fair bit more manageable in turns than the MX bikes, though due to their weight and size, you don't have as much airborne control over them. So while the ATVs are easier to handle and respond a bit more consistently, the MX bikes will allow to you really bite into the course and do some damage.

The buggies and trucks are quite similar in handling and feel, though the buggies are looser around corners. This gives them something of a rally racing feel, and they're much more fun to drive in the end. Being that you're always given the option of choosing between the two, there really isn't a reason to pick the trucks as the buggies are much more satisfying to drive.

The buggies are tied to an issue that's present both here and in the PSP game. After each race, you'll earn credits based not only on placement but a bonus on your trick total as well. Being as you can't perform tricks per se in a buggy or truck, you rack up trick points by catching air or sliding through turns. Since you'll automatically do these things a lot, you rack up bonus credits left and right. And unlike performing tricks on an ATV or bike, there really isn't any risk of crashing here. You can easily rack up many multiple times as many points in a buggy as you can on a bike. We ran about half-a-dozen races and were able to completely max out more than one of our vehicles.
However, maxing out your ride doesn't mean you'll kill the competition. There's a whole lot of AI assistance going on here, so no matter how fast you go you'll always be tailed by the opposition. It doesn't exactly make it seem fair, though it does keep the races interesting, and in that way it works. We just wish there was a tangible benefit to spending a bunch of cash on upgrades.

Beyond the assistance, the computer AI is pretty decent (and even vengeful), but it isn't perfect. At times, probably due to the assist features, it'll sometimes seem to take jumps better than it should be able to or accelerate quicker out of a turn than you can, even if you can burn it at other points. We've also seen a race or two where the lead opponent quickly burned ahead to a good 30 second lead as we raced perfectly fine, and yet in the other races in the championship everything was quite close. Curious indeed.
One of the new additions to ATV Offroad Fury 4 is Story Mode. You play the part of, you guessed it, an up-and-coming rider who came close to winning it all once, and is trying to do it again. The story isn't anything that'll win an Oscar, but it sort of works. Unfortunately, it really only acts as cutscenes between the game's numerous races, but at least it makes things a bit more interesting and puts characters behind some of the names.
One questionable item with this story mode is that for each race in a championship, you need to finish in third place or better to move on. The computer, of course, will finish fifth through eighth and come back again and again, but you have to finish on the podium in order to move to the next race. This doesn't really make a whole lot of sense as that means it's impossible for you to place any lower than third for an overall championship series. Of course, this may be necessary for the story, but it's kind of stupid that you need to retry a race for finishing fourth or something along those lines. It almost makes the point totals pointless.

While the story mode could be fleshed out a little better and the AI has a couple questionable elements, the game is pure fun to play. As mentioned, most all of the vehicles feel great, and the track design plays perfectly to the control physics. Plenty of turns and jumps await that'll test your ability to properly pre-load a launch and skit around a corner.

There's a whole lot of variety to the tracks here, enough that they're easy to recognize after a single race. Many of them are challenging to start as you need to learn their layout so that you don't over-commit to certain jumps, but they're unique enough that you'll pick this up quickly and play to each track's design. Good stuff here.

There are now multiple paths to some of the courses, some intended for ATVs and bikes and others for the larger vehicles. This gives you options as to how much gain or loss you want to risk here, adding another dimension to the competition.