MotorStorm

by Gangrane - 2007/11/05 2:09pm

Welcome to MotorStorm, the most unforgiving brutal racing festival in this fair land. After little delay Sony’s triple-A off-road driving experience takes place in a massive event of ‘anything goes’ rules. This festival of hits and misses takes place in the canyons of Arizona. Sony’s Evolution Studios bring the ruthless ride of ‘destroy or be destroyed’ gameplay right into the hands of the player with an intense amount of realism, level design, physics, and vehicle options.

The premise behind MotorStorm is to advance through this festival through beating races to unlock more tickets which hold new races. So, as you win races you earn more points according to the ticket level, and as you get more points, the collection of points unlocks more tickets with harder difficulty, different tracks, different vehicle limitations, and new vehicles. The tickets begin fairly easy and for the first handful of races the player will easily be able to come out of it in first or second place, leaving limited need for retrying to earn more points within the first selection. However, as you progress through the game, these they eventually proceed to the higher ticket levels where the frustration begins to just make the game even more rewarding, when the user is finally successful in the race leaving the competition in their dust. It gives a great sense of achievement.

From the roaring engines to peevish sound track, MotorStorm definitely has its highs and lows. The soundtrack in the game only consists of 20 songs or so, of which all but a few are hard rock… the extra few happen to be the most annoying techno beats ever added into a game. At first, they’re not too noticeable but seem to be in most of the races. Now, we know you’re just saying to yourselves “Wow, these guys are massive noobs”. Well, to foil your remark, there is no way to turn off any of the tracks, and while there is a playlist menu, it’s only accessible through backing out of your career into the main and audio menus. Even in here if you are looking for a specific song it still takes a long amount of time to reach the end of a 20-song soundtrack. At least you can turn off the music altogether. Despite this annoyance, MotorStorm is on spot with its sound where it really matters: the gameplay. There’s a distinct sound difference within every automobile.



Although the linear ticket progression will take a reasonable chunk of time to fully complete, once you have done that, there isn’t much more to experience. No quick play which is surprising, seeing how almost every racing game we’ve picked up since the late days of the first PlayStation have included this. You’d expect a game such as this, where you are trying to find the best route away from danger while riding, or just plow through everyone in the big rig, to be a great party game. Those wanting to pick up this game to sit around with your buddies and crash into each other, you’re out of luck. There is no spilt-screen mode, and furthermore, not even a variation into multiplayer, besides online play.

The environment textures play a big part in the appearance, and the developer nailed it – the simple blend of mud, dirt and clay would seem to be dull normally, but in MotorStorm, they have their own distinctive qualities surpassing all textures seen in a racer to date. Users will only be able to experience driving from two camera angles; a standard medium shot is set as the default, but also included is a zoom in of the vehicle where you just see the hood and what it is in front of you. Truly the graphics are the strong point, and make a nice showoff piece for your friends with the Wii, or other last generation consoles.

With so much potential and hype surrounding this game it turned out disappointing. The lack of options from the main menu, to the in-game pause menu with only a few options, can lead to a lot of back tracking through screens. Extremely long load times make trying to continue the rush from the previous race dissipate while you sit and wait at the loading screen. Extra hours of replay to earn more points through the ticket system is there, however if a player is looking to do a certain course with a certain vehicle they have to search through the different tickets, wait for it to load, and may not find the one that they are looking for until they are into the higher difficulty levels. By then it isn’t as relaxing as if the player is simply sitting down for half an hour to do a couple of nice easy races then continue on with their life. Even though the main game play is fun there is just too much pulling this game back, so your best bet is to wait for the sequel and hopefully Evolution Studios will have improved things by the time the next instalment of this promising series is here.