 Review By: Jared Black |
Developer: | Evolution Studios |
| Publisher: | SCEA | |
| Genre: | Racing | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1 (1-12 online) | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | PlayStation Network (online play, content DL), Headset Compatible, HDTV 720p | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Aside from perhaps Resistance: Fall of Man, which was the consensus best game at launch, MotorStorm has more pressure on it than any other early PlayStation 3 title. Long-touted as a showcase for the system’s Cell-powered muscle, early footage shown at E3 2005 was blasted for being mere target footage (AKA pre-rendered). Many gamers felt that Sony and developer Evolution Studios was being underhanded with the footage (and it wasn’t the only game blasted for that), and as a result MotorStorm was quickly ridiculed as a joke in many circles.
The game’s reputation didn’t improve a whole lot with it's debut in Japan either, despite some positive reviews and fantastic sales for a PS3 title, where it arrived without online play and was said to feel rushed in general. Now MotorStorm has arrived in North America with online play intact, and despite the criticism it has definitely lived up to the pre-release hype. MotorStorm may not sell a lot of PlayStation 3 consoles, but it sure will make a lot of PS3 owners very happy.
MotorStorm is all about the chaotic nature of off-road racing, and its entire design is geared towards being as anti-establishment and anarchistic as possible. Right away this starts with the rocking soundtrack, which features groups like Nirvana, Primal Scream, and Gluecifer. Whether you like the featured groups or not, the song selection for this sort of game is nearly perfect, and helps to amp the intensity of each race up. The setting is the fictional MotorStorm Festival in the middle of the Arizona desert, a weeklong rave with a party atmosphere and thousands of cheering spectators.
Once you get into a race, it’s all about dirty, chaotic off-road racing. The game features seven different vehicle classes, with a nice balance so that all of them are surprisingly competitive. These include several different types of MX bikes, ATVs, buggies, rally cars, racing trucks, mudpluggers, and big rigs. All of these should be self-explanatory, except perhaps the mudpluggers, which are basically bigger buggies with big wheels and heavy-duty suspensions, but are also slower than the other types of vehicles except the big rigs. Different terrains are suited to different types, such as rally cars being ill suited to rough or boggy terrain, MX Bikes being great where agility is key, and big rigs that can plow through nearly every obstacle but aren't ideal on faster courses.
You’ll make use of every vehicle throughout the single-player mode, as it’s laid out in a series of races on different tickets. Each ticket has one or more races on it, most of which specify a certain vehicle that must be used in the race. These tickets are ordered logically, getting the player used to each type of vehicle and increasing in difficulty as the game progresses.
Unfortunately, for a game that’s all about chaos, the game is surprisingly limited in its single-player mode. As points are earned you’ll unlock new tickets and other surprises, but races are totally off-limits until they’re unlocked. With vehicle types locked to each class for each race (except when races are on The Grizzly, which is the longest course and has the widest variety of terrain), early on this results in a lack of race variety. Later, once most of the races are unlocked, you’ll probably find a race that best suits your mood at the time, but you’ll still have to hunt through several tickets before you find the one you want. Sadly, there’s no Quick Race type option to simply race one of the game’s eight courses with a custom set of rules, and this ends up limiting the game’s replay value as a single-player experience. Given all of the options offered when racing online, such as the track, types of vehicles used, and so forth, it seems like it would’ve been fairly easy to add in a Quick Race mode, and it’s a real shame that there isn’t one here.
Posted: 2007-03-25 12:12:29 PST