It's been a couple of years since MX vs. ATV Untamed hit the shelves, and while I'm sure the game had its fans, it was generally received by mixed reviews, including our own. Many of the criticisms leveled against the game were simply that the gameplay was getting stale; visually the game needed an upgrade, that the freestyle tricks system was far too complicated, and frankly not a whole lot of fun. Reflex promised to introduce a new control and physics model, and address many of the criticisms of past releases.

Fortunately, Reflex delivers on that promise. And having an additional year to refine the gameplay and rework the physics has definitely paid off. Quite frankly, this is the best racing game Rainbow has ever developed.

Upon starting the game, you're instantly thrown into a tutorial to introduce you to the gameplay changes, and allow you to try out a few techniques before ever hitting the track in an event. These tutorials are excellent and do a great job of introducing the new control elements, and the freestyle tricks system. Given the scope of the changes, they'll also help to get long-term fans of the series up to speed and break some of the habits of old.

Reflex offers three primary modes of play, arcade, MotoCareer, and multiplayer supporting Xbox Live and PSN, split-screen, or system link. Most of the tracks and event types are locked at the beginning, so you'll quickly want to jump into the MotoCareer to unlock them for play in arcade mode.

Reflex offers seven different classes of vehicles, MX, MX Lite, ATV, Sport Buggy, UTV, Sport Truck, and Sport 2 Truck, used across various events (and some mixed events, like Omnicross). One of the big strengths of Reflex is the wealth of event types, each supporting a different set of vehicle classes and tracks. Nationals are races on large outdoor tracks, where winning is both a combination of luck and skill. The tracks tend to composed of fairly rough and mixed terrain, with little margin for error. Supercross is much more technical, indoor arenas with huge jumps, where timing and precision are everything. Omnicross are races with mixed vehicle classes, you'll find vehicles of all classes competing on more open-world tracks, to be the first to cross the finish line. Champion Sport Track are closed track races with the larger vehicle offerings, that tend to be more like the traditional racing you're used to seeing. As well, Reflex offers waypoint races, which are huge open-world tracks where race from point-to-point and try to be the first to make it to the final flag. My personal favourite, freestyle mode where you push your bike or ATV to the limits and perform huge stunts in large crowd-packed stadiums, and finally a free ride mode that allows you to explore the large outdoor tracks at your leisure.

You'll likely spend most of your time in either the MotoCareer or Multiplayer modes of Reflex. In MotoCareer, you'll create a rider and work through a series of championship events, earning money along the way to purchase new rides, as well as unlocking tracks and new vehicle classes. These championship events are typically divided down into three to five races each. For example, in a Supercross championship, you may have two Supercross races, and then a "special event" for the finale. Oddly enough, this final event may or may not be Supercross (perhaps a heavy sport truck race), and generally has a variation, like elimination or beat the clock. My personal favorite has to be the freestyle championships. I find the new tricks system to be both very precise and simply a lot of fun (which isn't something I could say about the freestyle in Untamed).

For the multiplayer offerings, you'll find all of the previously mentioned modes, as well as two others, tag and snake. In the tag mode, players explore a large open-world looking for a giant ball, the first player to find the ball becomes "it", with the goal of holding into it for sixty seconds. Any time another player hits the ball, they become "it". Snake on the other hand has similarities to the classic game Tron, starting out with one barrier that, as soon as you touch it are eliminated. The game gets increasingly difficult (and more fun) as more players lines are added into the mix. Each of the multiplayer modes are available over Xbox Live and PlayStation Network for up to twelve players, as well as split-screen and system link.