Dirt Bike Insanity

Genre: Motorbike Racing

Players: 1

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Review:

Dirt Bike Insanity is a Motorbike Racing game released on PC in 2018 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. That’s about all I can say about this game that isn’t negative.

Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. This game’s rock-inspired soundtrack, while a tad on the generic side, is otherwise pretty good, and suits the game very well. So there you go, Dirt Bike Insanity, I’ve said one good thing about you. Now on to the rest.

Since I last mentioned the music, I’ll move on to the sound, and suffice it to say there’s just not much here beyond the one-pitch drone of the bike engines. No variation in engine sounds, no environmental noises, no announcers. In fact, the constant single note of engine sounds is so lacking in variation that it doesn’t take long to tone it out, leaving this game sounding empty save for its soundtrack.

Yet this is still arguably better than the visuals. In short, this would have made for an ugly game if it released in the early days of the PlayStation 2, and it’s an outright embarrassment on the Nintendo Switch. Ugly, muddy textures, lots of fog, terrible, jagged shadows. However, while all of these terrible visual elements make the game look cheap and dated, the worst part of the presentation here has to be the animation, which is outright absurd. Riders flop around left and right on their bikes like silly rag dolls, and when two bikes collide, they get stuck together in an awkward pose where each rider is frozen leaning to either side like the two have combined into one entity or something. It’s really bizarre, and I actually laughed out loud. By the third or fourth time, it was just frustrating.

As you might have guessed, the gameplay here isn’t a saving grace for this game, either. If this game didn’t have control issues, I would take it to task for being boring, one-note, and lacking anything resembling nuance. There’s little thought that goes into racing here – move forward, turn left, turn right, maybe occasionally hit a jump that prevents you from moving while in mid-air. That’s it. And that’s pretty bad… but that’s if the controls weren’t an issue.

When it comes to the controls, the game starts off on a bad note by refusing to recognize the Pro Controller – it will only respond to Joy-Cons. That’s frustrating already, but what really takes this to a new level of infuriating is that all of the game’s controls are mapped to the stick here. It’s what turns you and moves you forward. Oh, don’t think about trying to reverse – you can’t. In that situation, you just have to press the button to reset your position.

Want to know the worst part? This horrible mess of a game will set you back $8 and take up over 2GB of memory on your Nintendo Switch. All for a game that’s a graphical embarrassment with botched controls, simple and uninteresting gameplay, and absolutely nothing to make it worth getting. There are multiple better Motorbike Racing games on Nintendo Switch – get one of those instead.

tl;dr – Dirt Bike Insanity is a Motorbike Racing game that gets nearly nothing right. Laughably bad visuals, terrible controls, and boring gameplay that lacks any sort of nuance. And despite this, the game is still normally priced at $8 and takes up over 2GB of space. Trust me – it’s not worth your time, money, or the memory it would take to house this game on your Nintendo Switch. Skip it.

Grade: D-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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