If you remember the similarly freeform areas in Microsoft’s Motocross Madness games with any fondness, the compound is worth at least one tour. It won’t hold many players' attention for long, but there’s something admirable about Milestone's willingness to throw in a different way to explore its bike handling, without the imperative to be going flat-out at all times. In this freeform area, Supercross 4 goes quasi-open world, inviting you to hunt for collectibles and blaze your own trails, finding sick jumps and daring routes over, under, and often in bone-shattering collision with environmental features.
Milestone's passion for Supercross just oozes out of every customisation menu and QWOP-like manoeuvre.Īnd if the world of professional racing is getting you down if you’re jaded by all the men in snapbacks who look like they listen to Five Finger Death Punch, duking it out in races with more energy drink logos per square inch than a Kyle’s recycling bin, there's always the compound.
And the bike parts-oh, the bike parts! The designers' obsession with the culture of motocross, not just the science of it, really spills over here.
Earning in-game currency to unlock new customisation options seems just as imperative, and while Supercross 4 is generous enough at doling this out-"You landed a jump! Here's some cash"-there are, perhaps, billions of unlockables here.
With that clear emphasis on grinding to improve your stats, it's odd to find success so much easier to come by in career mode races than championship events, but you can always bump the difficulty up to incentivise that grind a bit more and lend a greater realism to your career-after all, if you’re winning from the start, why would you pay attention to that upgrade tree?Īs far as I can tell, winning races is only sort of the point, anyway. How often since, oh, 2002, have your ears been treated to butt rock while you race? MotoGP players will feel very familiar with everything but the racing itself in Supercross 4, from the rewind function (itself cribbed from Codemasters' F1 series) to the impressive Unreal Engine lighting and vibrant texture work-and the slightly anachronistic UI and race presentation. Or perhaps the next Jean-Michel Bayle would be more appropriate-just like the Frenchman, Milestone's aiming for success in both road racing and moto disciplines, and sharing a lot of presentational tenets between them. The focus is on developing your rider, ticking off training events (don't get excited, they're truncated races), and spending points in an upgrade tree until you’ve built the next Jeremy McGrath.