It wasn't all too long ago when extreme sports titles were pouring out of every publisher and saturating the market with numerous copycat clones. Luckily, the flood has subsided somewhat, and the new releases tend to be higher quality. Activision, the masters of video game skateboarding with the Tony Hawk series, have now turned to motocross with MTX Mototrax. While it has touches of Tony Hawk, luckily MTX comes across as a distinctively original game.

The bulk of the gameplay in MTX Mototrax revolves around the career mode, which represents all the major disciplines of the motocross sport with supercross, motocross, freestyle and free-roam modes as you earn money in races and move up the career ladder. Supercross and motocross involve straight up racing, with tricks simply a bonus for flair and to attract the purses of sponsors. While both modes are somewhat similar, supercross races take place in twisty stadium tracks with many 180 degree turns while motocross races are held outside with straighter tracks. Freestyle is where you go all out with tricks and have the opportunity to learn new ones. In fact, you start the game off with only 6 tricks, and have to gradually pick up more throughout the duration of the career. Going through career also unlocks authentic gear from well known companies, and you can upgrade and unlock brand new bikes with beefier engines. The drawback is that there isn't much incentive to going back and racing tracks you've already completed, which means replay value takes a hit.

Free roam is where the Tony Hawk influence really shows through. In this mode, you can ride freely around the course and talk to people scattered through the level to be prompted with a challenge. These range from traditional score and collect-a-thon challenges to skill challenges like how far you can jump and how long you can keep a wheelie going. Some of the best challenges are more creative such as jumping from barge to barge to cross a dock. Overall this mode is created quite well and is a great diversion from simply racing over and over.

As in all motocross games, an important element of gameplay is preloading the suspension of the bike to get an extra boost at the top of a ramp. While this facet can be somewhat tricky in other games, MTX Mototrax translates this maneuver into the simple pushing of a button. In fact, all you have to really do is time the release of the button to get that lift to clear a jump. Because preloading has been simplified so much, the game is really easy to pick up and play, but at the same time, feels a bit too easy.

The trick system is also a big aspect of playing the game, although it's not quite as refined as Tony Hawk's seamless tricks. Performing tricks involves simple combinations of directions and various buttons, but when you learn a new trick, sometimes the instructions that the game provides on how to execute it aren't accurate. For example, some tricks need to be input before landing, but the game tells you to do it after. You can figure it out after fiddling around with the controls, but it's puzzling how they can mess something up like this. Trick multipliers are in MTX also, although you don't have to link tricks together with wheelies (luckily). All that is required to create a string of tricks is continuously landing aerial tricks; once you crash, the combo ends. Simplistic, but it works.

Single player has many races to go through and will last awhile, but as mentioned before, there's not much motivation to going through and re-racing tracks that have already been completed. Multiplayer is limited to two players offline, but luckily there's Xbox Live support, the only Xbox supercross title that has this. So if nothing else, MTX has this going for it. There's basically two modes, a king of the hill similar to that in Tony Hawk, and a freestyle competition. Both offer good fun as you race against fellow motocross enthusiasts.

The visuals in MTX are bright and crisp, with clean and detailed textures. The sensation of speed is surprisingly great as you blast through the forest leaping over hills. Framerate also consistently breezes along at 60 fps. As is typical of extreme sports titles, MTX features quite a few bands such as Dope, Slipknot, and Metallica. The music fits nicely along with the action, but you can always use the custom soundtrack option and race to your own favorite music.

Overall MTX Mototrax offers a pretty good racing game backed up with plenty of tricks to learn. Going through the game and completing challenges is worthwhile, but afterwards, there's not much else making me come back to continue playing. A track builder is included to let your creativity run loose, but tinkering around with that gets old after awhile. Track builders have been done so much by now that frankly I'm getting tired of them. MTX Mototrax makes for a great rental for a weekend of gameplay, but I would say that's about it.