ATB Freeride Demo

As Oculus Rift technology comes closer to being accessible to a wider audience of gamers, titles such as ATB Freeride will make investments totally worth it. ATB Freeride pitches you in the perspective of a mountain bike freerider and sets you loose on some crazy tough tracks.

One thing that you notice right away is how well the rider perspective is implemented. It’s not perfect, in fact, it’s far from it, but it’s very close to reality. Going down a steep piece of hill or mountain side is going to make you hold your breath and maintain sharp focus, especially if you’re going to run this in a big screen.

Visually, the game is excellent although much more can be done in terms of visuals. Notice the lack of accurate motion blur and how the hands look on the handlebars. Seriously the hands need work, they’re terrible.

However, the controls although really hard to get used to when playing on a keyboard, do justice to the sport. It takes a lot of skill to be able to plunge on a bike on nearly vertical ledges, and fly between trees at 80 mph. Tackling gameplay is very tricky business when you’re building a game like this but so far, it’s very good. It takes time to get used to how the bike handles but then again, so does learning how to ride a real one.

ATB Freeride is something that needs to come to life, whether it’s just for Oculus Rift or every platform imaginable.

There’s room for improvement on just about anything. The tracks you can opt for are very good and in some portions, actually intimidating. You get ramps in key sections of the tracks, and there are some very big tricks to pull off. However, the tire on dirt, gravel and stone audio effects need a lot of improvement and if I’m the kind of person who rides without a helmet, I need to hear the wind. When it comes to ATB Freeride, its perfection comes from the small details.

The demo is in alpha stages so expect a limited amount of game time. ATB Freeride will close abruptly and the development page will pop up. Restarting the game will make it work again but the latter will keep happening. So far, ATB Freeride is a great idea for a game and if it surfaces in a completed form, it’s bound to create some addictions.