“…Wipe the mud from your eyes and let’s get dirty…”

THQ

THQ

Rainbow Studios

1

1

Rainbow Studios

Racing

n/a

n/a

Racing

Release: 12/01/09

33.5 sec

25.8 sec

Release: 12/01/09

ESRB: Everyone

5.12%

0.90%

ESRB: Everyone

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				Head2Head – MX vs. ATV Reflex Analysis Length: 00:06:03 We go Head2Head with MX vs. ATV Reflex for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Welcome back for yet another exciting Head2Head brought to you by Play N Trade (Oviedo)! This week we take a ride with the newest addition to motor sports racing, MX vs. ATV Reflex. The question begs: which version is the muddiest and which version should be buried 6 feet under? Wipe the mud from your eyes and let’s get dirty, cause you’re about to find out!

Graphics: MX vs ATV Reflex doesn’t push the visual envelope, but it does innovate with rather nifty terrain deformations. The terrain appears to be divided into two systems: dynamic geometry tessellations and normal maps. The dynamic geometry tessellation happens from distance of the camera to about 20 feet, then normal maps kick in from 20ft from the camera onward. This allows for dramatic terrain deformations that is rarely seen (and usually faked with parallax occlusion maps). The ground could even be “shredded” down to a water layer, which was a nice effect. However, we had two complaints about the technology. The first was that surfaces such as grass deformed the same way as sand and mud, often looking far too deep. The second issue was that both consoles suffered from a very noticeable hard line that divided the dynamic ground deformations from the normal maps. Fortunately, when it comes to graphics, both games came really close to one another. The PlayStation 3 version had much more defined shading on the terrain, but suffered from a short filter distance (textures were blurry at a distance). The Xbox 360 version had less dramatic shading on the terrain up close, but held more details at a distance. So basically the graphics are a muddy stalemate.

Performance: Both versions of MX vs ATV Reflex performed relativity well. The frame rate on both consoles ran on par with one another, however the obvious and only difference here was the screen tearing. Globally, the Xbox 360 had less than 1% screen tears while PlayStation 3 was a little over 5%. Most of the time the screen tearing happened on the PlayStation 3 when there were a lot of vehicles on the screen at once. Take a look at the findings below:

Loading: Both systems had very similar load times. In our loading samples, the PlayStation 3 averaged in at 33.5 seconds whereas the Xbox 360 averaged at 25.8 seconds. Also, the PlayStation 3 version didn’t require a mandatory hard drive install. Regardless, the load times were fairly quick and are well masked with an interactive test track where you can practice jumps and tricks before a race.

Roll over to see the differences.

Roll over to see the differences.

Roll over to see the differences. Notice the differences in ground detail.

Roll over to see the differences. Notice the differences in ground detail.