It’s an unfortunate fact that a lot of things that you see on TV that look like they would be really fun to try are actually quite uncomfortable, dangerous, or both. Take, for example, Red Bull Air Racing, Motocross (MX) motorcycle racing, and being married to Angelina Jolie. The Air Racing, while it looks cool and exciting, fits both the dangerous (I think we can safely stipulate that as being self-evident) and the uncomfortable tags. I doubt that many of you have felt the effects of a 9G turn, but having pulled 4Gs or so myself I can assure you that it is anything but comfortable. Being married to Angie? Just ask Brad Pitt. Motocross racing? Well, we’re here to find that out.

Specifically, we’re here to talk about MX vs. ATV: Untamed, a new release from THQ/Rainbow Studios for the Xbox 360. If you’ve ever seen a motocross race, there are a few facets of it that you will certainly remember. Most likely, the first thing that jumps to mind is, well, the jumps. The motorcycles are light and powerful, and the tracks are designed with many hills throughout them. The combination of ‘light, powerful motorcycle’ plus ‘lots of hills’ equals ‘flying motorcycles’. Or, in my case, ‘flying motorcycle rider’, but we’ll get to that. One of the other traits associated with this type of racing is dirt. Plenty of dirt. Copious amounts of dirt. Dirt everywhere. Dirt being thrown in rooster tails from the rear tires of the bikes. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Well, unless there’s mud. Or both. Dirt AND mud. Riders so covered in it that all you can see is their eyes behind the visor of their helmets, and even that much only if they have tear-offs left. In a word, MX racing is messy. Finally, you probably remember the sound of the engines. They don’t have the deep, pounding thunder of a street bike. Instead, they have a quick-revving, raspy noise, and when they’re racing in large numbers (which they do), they have the sound of a hive of disturbed hornets.

Now, being as I’m of an age where I view a broken collarbone as more that just a minor inconvenience, it is too late for me to ever ride one of these bikes in the way they’re intended to be ridden. I could probably putter around a parking lot, or even ride a relatively flat trail, but I don’t believe that I will ever leap 30 feet into the air, kick the bike out into a sick nac-nac, and land gracefully (and safely) back on terra firma. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to, of course, but at some point in your life the “common frikking sense” gene is bound to become dominant, and I’m there. Fortunately, I have the benefit of maturing in synch with the maturation of electronic devices that allow me to feel the vicarious thrill of things like this with ever increasing fidelity. Will I ever know the true thrill of landing a big jump? No, of course not, but I will also never know the true feeling of crushing both testicles against the unforgiving seat of an MX bike. A fair trade, that. But, and this is a big butt (heh, worked in another Angelina Jolie reference when you weren’t looking!), I will get to experience some portion of both of those, without incurring any further risk to bodily damage than that which will likely occur when I bring home an Xbox 360 without asking the wife first.

This brings us (finally!) to MX vs. ATV: Untamed, which from here on out, I will refer to as MXvATV. All that stuff that I labored through above? It’s all in there. The jumps (and the falls). The dirt. The apoidea-like (Look it up. I did.) sound of the engines. And it’s all there in glorious 1080i HD. But before we get into the nitty-gritty, there’s one more thing that needs to be defined. I’ve already talked about ‘MX’, or motocross. The ‘ATV&rsquo...