It takes a mountain biker to know what a mountain biker would want in a game! Matt Jones is a professional mountain biker for Team Red Bull in the pro scene. He has put his time and energy into creating MAVRIX by Matt Jones, an open-world, authentic space for like-minded gaming bikers to come together in one excellent package.
The game is not without its faults, and it’s going to be hard to fully critique a game in early access when I don’t know what may or may not change for the final release. That being said, what I didn’t like still doesn’t take away from the overall superb experience the game delivers.
This game is an open-world, physics-based, 2 to 50 multiplayer playground for you to race, jump and generally mess around with on two types of mountain bikes in a fictional mountainous bike park. Events, races, online leaderboards, chair lifts, customization, it has it all here, and it is excellently presented and put together.
With the game focusing on realistic physics (to a point), it makes getting around the world and mastering tricks and jumps a challenge that is just the right side of accessible…..just! Not going to lie, I spent twenty minutes stuck on one of the tutorial levels (front and back flips) before I could progress. Now, I’m hours into the game, and I’ve become much more proficient.
From your van located roughly in the middle of the 100 square km map, you follow the sign posts to the nearest chair lift and set sail on your voyage of mountain bike heaven. I don’t have to pay for a chair lift for a start! LOL!
I’ll start with the positives. The game world is GORGEOUS! The world is vibrant, lush, and detailed, with absolutely superb lighting effects. Sunlight casting shadows in forested areas is sublime! The game runs at a very smooth 60fps also with some fantastic visual touches, like your t-shirt flapping realistically in the wind as you speed down a track. Rocks, however, lacked the same polish as the foliage and didn’t look well textured or rendered. They just looked like, well, blocks.
The bike animations look superb as well, especially when you are in the third-person view. This is important as being able to see what your bike is doing whilst trying to perform tricks at high speed is hard enough as it is. The graphics also felt fantastic and had effects to simulate high speed. When you tuck down a long hill, the visual effect of speed cuts in along with the sound effects. It’s utterly intoxicating for the player to keep going for more!
The controls are also very intuitive, and it’s easy to remember which flicks, stick movements, and button presses do what for what tricks. For example, L2 is back brake, R2 front brake, and the combination of pressing these individually or together transpires realistically to your bike. The right joystick is used for weight distribution, the left for direction. Button presses or flicks, before or after you take off, do various things for tricks.
The variety of content is excellent as well, in so much as no two trails felt similar to another. Being able to free roam and make your own fun is always a plus, but the designed trails are also very entertaining to ride along.
As you ride along, you can also listen to some excellent music that perfectly fits the vibe of the game. Again, not going to lie, as an occasional cross country biker myself, I enjoyed just playing the game to cruise around the world, taking in the stunning views and simply just enjoying being there, let alone doing anything.
But (sorry, there are a few buts coming), there are a few things that I think need to be addressed for the final release of the game. Everything I’m about to mention does not ruin the experience, but they are things that I’d like to see improved upon.
The first is the in-game audio. I could barely hear the bike effects on the tracks, and the only bike effect I did notice was a very annoying metallic squeak. There are different effects as your tires roll over wooded planks and dirt, but I’d like to hear more gravel noise and clicking wheel hubs than barely anything at all.
The physics of the game are a little hit and miss. They mostly hit, just occasionally, but when you need them the most, they miss. I struggled with the aforementioned jump flips because, as far as I could tell, I was landing on both wheels perfectly straight but still ended up crashing for some reason. Then, at times, I’d get a jump or spin wrong, land at speed a little sideways, which should have technically thrown me off the bike, but that landed okay?
Berms (high-sided banked corners) always felt a little flakey. Sometimes, I’d enter them and keep the speed and whizz around them perfectly (such a rush when you do). Other times, I’d hit them in the exact same manner, only for the animation to throw me unrealistically to the top edge of the berm with little time to make an adjustment. It felt like the game was in a rush to change my position.
That is also a theme of why I didn’t like riding in first-person view. The animations felt rushed between points and unrealistic. You instantly went from one position on your bike to the next with minimal frames of transition between. It just made the game look unrealistic in a realistic looking world.
As for viewpoints, there are only two of them (technically three, but looking backwards feels pointless, for the most part, unless you are stationary). They are a first-person view and a third-person view behind the rider. I didn’t like the first-person view for the reasons explained above, but I also didn’t like the third-person view sometimes either.
The camera angle is too low behind the rider, so when you get up to top speed and are crouching, you can’t see directly in front of the bike. With some courses having very narrow sections to get through, sometimes at speed, not seeing a rock in front of you was annoying. A slightly higher third option camera angle would be perfect.
Until you complete an area’s challenge checklist, you can’t unlock any more fast travel points other than your starting van. The challenges to unlock a fast travel point are pretty tough but also hard to find what you need to do in the game to do that anyway (go to your hub, go to “sponsors”, click on which sponsor you want, find the challenges, then back out and find those trails on the map – I think!).
I prefer to ride downhill speed sections rather than do tricks. There are two types of bikes to try from the get-go. One is an enduro bike, the other a downhill type. Downhill bikes in the real world have beefed up suspension and are generally a little heavier than enduro bikes. Doing the same downhill runs on two types of bikes, it was disappointing to not notice or feel any performance differences at all. Surely a downhill bike, designed to smooth out bumps and jump better to keep you lower for more speed, is not hard to program into the game? I was also disappointed that most of the runs in the game are only around 60 to 90 seconds long, despite there being over 100 square km of game world to play in. I’d love to race down a track about 8 to 10 minutes of raw speed as they do in the downhill pro leagues.
Let me be clear, none of the above gripes are game-changers that ruin the experience. I still absolutely adore this game as it is. I just would like the above tweaks to be implemented so they can elevate the game to the potential the full release could have. As it’s an early access title, they may very well be working on just that, I don’t know.
When the game does come together, it’s fantastic. Nailing a run full of jumps (which I’m not a huge fan of) is very satisfying, I must admit. Finding a ridiculously long, large, fun jump to try different techniques is hilarious. The game’s highlight for me, though, is on the few downhill speed sections.
The game has Rob Warner, an ex-downhill champion himself, commentate on the race you are in, section by section. Let me be clear. HE IS FANTASTIC! His commentary really pushes you to try harder in the middle of a race. The level of excitement he brings to each race you try is worth the admission price alone, let alone the quality of the game. Better still, let me just show you so you can see and hear the game, as well as Rob in action for a run I did.
How can you not get carried away and want to do more when you hear Rob like this?
MAVRIX by Matt Jones is so much fun and so well made. Yes, there are some tweaks I’d like to see added in, but even if none of them are, I’ll still enjoy the game the way it currently plays. I’m very curious to see how much more content is still to come for the game’s full release, but in the meantime, I’ve found my chill mountain bike game that I’m happy to just be part of, enjoy, and just cruise around. It’s realistic enough to be a rewarding challenge, easy enough to master, but most of all, hilarious fun to play.
Developer: Third Kind Games
Publisher: Cascade Interactive
Platforms: Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC
Release Date: 22nd January 2026
