A rainy day at the industrial track.

ATV 2 has lots of little details that add up for me. Things like mud splashing on your rider, environments that are imaginative, the sun getting in your eyes as you come over a hill, the drastic difference in lighting when entering into a cave, whiteouts in the snow, the color of a watery section of mud, and rain splashing effects on the camera. While some of these may just be gimmicky, I thought that they worked well in this case. The different terrains do make the vehicles handle differently and you will need to adjust your driving accordingly. For example, don’t expect to be able to maintain the same speed when crossing water or to have the same traction when in mud. The differences are at times maybe a little too dramatic, but they come across well enough. I also like the way other riders affect you. During a race it’s not uncommon for a rider to cut you off, or you to cut them off, and have your ATVs touch. Sometimes the reaction isn’t too bad but if the bump hits you in the direction you’re already going, it’s possible that you’ll end up flying off course. Most of the time I thought that the resulting crash was well deserved on my part and didn’t come across as cheap. Heck, I was trying to cut the dude off so I kind of deserved to go tumbling! But if you thought it was unfair, you can always get back at the rider next time you meet by kicking them off their ATV. What goes around comes around!

ATV 2 is full of tricks like many extreme games. As mentioned earlier, the better you do in races the more tricks you will learn. You start of with some “simple” tricks such as Superman, the Can Can and later you’ll do doing things like a Handstand or a Reverse Spin. These are usually achieved by different combos using the Control Stick and a certain combo of buttons. (A word of advice here. I’m not a huge fan of reading manuals…maybe it’s a guy thing. Anyway it took me a while to realize that in order to pull off even the most basic trick involving the Control Stick it’s very important to just “flick” the stick and release. I found that out by reading the manual. Go figure!) The tricks are not anything special and it would have been nice to see something different. Every extreme game out there has the “Superman” move or the “Handstand”, can’t they come up with something new? You can do these tricks during a race, but the best place to display you talents is in the arena. Basically this is just like it sounds. You can go to one of two arenas where you try to pull off as many tricks as possible in either a limited amount of time or you can go with no time limit. The arena is very Tony-Hawkish where you try to get the most amount of points and you can get multipliers for doing combos. It’s much easier to do some of the crazier tricks here where you don’t have to worry about some other psycho rider knocking you off of your ride!

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 80%.  ATV: Quad Power Racing 2 is a fun game that may not be the most original thing in the world but is a decent buy at the $29.99 price.

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