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By KevinG (3rd Jun 2008)

The signs were bad from the beginning for ATV Thunder Ridge Riders & Monster Trucks Mayhem, when the translation on the back cover was incorrect (for “cart” read “card”, and for that matter “great” should have read as “horrendous”). Even the fact that two games are packaged for the price of one can’t save this title as the extra game just makes it twice as painful.

This may appear to be a new release but they are not new games by any stretch of the imagination. Both games are in fact ports of two Game Boy Advance titles that were out three years ago. They may have been barely good enough for the Game Boy Advance, but they are an insult to the DS and anyone with the misfortune of playing them.

I chose ATV Thunder Ridge Riders as my introduction to the misery and my jaw dropped when I finally stumbled through the menu and onto the ATV track. The graphics are blockier than a brick factory production line and the physics engine felt like it was designed by me, and I failed physics repeatedly in virtually every exam I had in it. All that went through my head was: “I can’t believe that anyone would make games like this anymore”. The music and sound effects are abysmal though thankfully they can be turned off in the options menu (which is all that can be changed there) or with a relief-inducing flick of the volume controls.

After my initial shock I persevered though Quick Game, where you get to race three opponents on the track of your choice; Timed Checkpoint, where you get to waste your time passing through checkpoints until you get lost or complete three laps; and the Career mode, where you get to race all seven tracks and move onto the next by finishing in first or second place.

The ATVs (you have a selection of four colours to choose from) handle dreadfully and the terrain they travel over seems to have no affect on their handling, because when you travel up a hill the view of the handlebars remains static. It was after a while floating up these hills that I noticed that there is just one big track in ATV and that the different races are made up only by markers being placed to indicate the routes. If you don’t go through these markers the lap counter will stop until you find which ones you missed, but there’s not much chance of that happening. While racing in the Career mode you can collect money while on the track and also from placing well against your three opponents when finishing the race. These earnings can be used to add modifications to your vehicle, which is a completely pointless exercise as they make absolutely no different to performance, handling, acceleration or top speed and only serve to reduce your cash total.

After all this I thought that at least I could get some kind of enjoyment out of the multiplayer only to find out that it did not support download multiplayer. It requires two copies of the game and seeing as I hopefully have the only copy of it, this feature will remain untested.

So moving swiftly on to Monster Truck Mayhem. To make this easy you can just read e the previous paragraphs and replace ATV Thunder Ridge Riders with Monster Truck Mayhem as this suffers pretty much all of the same issues. This may seem lazy, but it is an approach that suits this title perfectly. Amazingly, despite the poor quality of the games, there isn’t even an easy option to switch between them. You must turn off the DS, once you have already selected one game to play, to choose to load up the other. This is tempting fate as there’s not much chance that once you have turned off the DS, that the game card will ever see the light of day again.

One extra addition to Monster Truck Mayhem though is the Crunch Melee option. Here you must drive your truck over as many of the 17 blue cars in the arena as you can while trying to avoid the other three contestants and the pillars. The animation when the truck hits one of the pillars in the arena and flips over on its roof is quite comical, but unfortunately that’s as positive as it gets.

From the minute I loaded up the games until finishing the career modes of both it just seemed like one disappointment after another. I thought that I was being harsh, so I gave the game to someone younger than me to try out. They summed it up as “boring” and didn’t finish one race in ATV before turning it off. That really hits the nail on the head. ATV Thunder Ridge Riders & Monster Trucks Mayhem is as challenging as clapping your hands and as much fun to look at dirty diaper. The only redeeming factor was the amusement of coming up with alternate names for the title. ATV Toilet Rim Racers & Midget Truck Mishap came out top.