MX Nitro: Unleashed

Genre: 2D Stunt Racing

Players: 1

.

Review:

MX Nitro Unleashed is a 2D Stunt Racing game released in 2020 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Like the games in the Trials series, MX Nitro: Unleashed has players riding a motorcycle through an obstacle course and must shift their weight to stay balanced and respond to various challenges thrown at you. Compare the gameplay here to classic games like Excitebike and Motocross Maniacs and you have a bit of an idea.

Much as in the Trials games, despite the strictly 2D gameplay, the visuals here are in full 3D, and while I wouldn’t go as far as to call it impressive, it still looks mostly good, with detailed and interesting environments and decent animation for the racers, and there are even nice details like mud smearing on their jumpsuits. The one issue I have with these visuals is that the logos on the bikes themselves look absurdly low-quality and blurry.

These visuals are joined by some poor voice acting from both the characters and an announcer who sounds like he’s trying his best Ryan Seacrest impersonation, and backed by energetic music that inevitably gets swallowed up by the noise of the bikes. Overall, it’s not bad, but as I said, it’s far from anything truly standout.

When it comes to the gameplay, MX Nitro gets the basics down, and sets itself apart from the Trials series by being less about the crazy courses than it is about racing and doing tricks, with a solid trick-boost system. This game even does something clever in having some tracks that run in a continuous circle, purely for the purposes of doing tricks, which is such a great idea I’m surprised I don’t think I’ve seen it before in this subgenre.

However, what this game does right is largely undone by an absurd difficulty curve. While even the first tutorial level has one nasty steep hill that’s a pain to climb, otherwise the game is fairly sensible to start with, but only a few levels in you’re already seeing levels with jumps that are impossible if you haven’t saved nitro to bridge the gap, and even then you’ll have to have lined up the jump well enough in the first place. I found myself repeatedly having to restart this level because it was so exacting that it seemed to demand perfection to complete it – not to win, just to finish the race.

It’s really frustrating that MX Nitro seems to have some good ideas to bring to the genre, a solid gameplay foundation, and a decent presentation, only to throw that all away on an absurdly sadistic difficulty curve. As a result, this game may still appeal to diehard fans of the genre seeking a challenge, but most players are better off sticking with the Trials games.

tl;dr – MX Nitro: Unleashed is a 2D Stunt Racing game that has some good ideas for the genre, but those ideas are overshadowed by an absurdly steep difficulty curve that makes this a game that’s unlikely to appeal to anyone other than the more sadistic fans of this genre.

Grade: C+

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}