Finally got around to playing
MUD Motocross World Championship, which I got from the Namco Bandai pack from Amazon a while back. NB really sucks at publicity apparently. The game has surprisingly good production values and fairly advanced physics, and has the potential for being a sleeper.
It's a motocross game obviously, which is a bit unusual in and of itself. Beyond controlling steering and throttle, you also have to manage your rider's lean direction, so from moment to moment, it's a bit more involved than a car racing game. The terrain is actively modeled (during the course of the race, you start to see the tracks left by the bikes, and they affect your control over your bike).
At FXAA x4, it looks really good, but I can only manage 40-50ish fps.
Playing it with no AA at 144 fps is a better gameplay experience imho (but not nearly as good-looking of course).
Bad stuff:
- does not have 360 button prompts even when using controller
- vibration option in the menu seems to not be working? have to investigate this one
- limited music selection (don't think there are any licensed music tracks)
Will put more time into it this weekend to see if things start to fall apart later in the game. Also have to try out some of the other modes, like Trick mode. This might end up being the best out of the three games in that pack (also had Ace Combat and Ridge Racer: Unbounded).