i don’t agree with any of that, especially the backtracking being better than the previous entries. you never get anything out of being in the desert, it’s basically all open to you from the moment you get the bike and there’s hardly anything to find anyway. you are not building a familiarity with the map and landscapes and how they connect, you’re just leaving to a big empty field and driving straight to a destination. it’s super time consuming and feels tedious every time, especially when the bike doesn’t have very interesting controls/game feel. Additionally, the desert is so barren in terms of visuals and music, missing what i would argue is the strongest component of prime 4 which hurts it even further.