Wednesday 30 Jan 2008

It seems but a few weeks ago that Sony showed us some footage of this upcoming game at E3 and here we are playing it to our hearts content. Was the hype worth it? Well, yes and no.

Motorstorm is most definitely not the most revolutionary game out on the market but what it does do is bring a whole new vibe to the racing genre. Reminds me of what SSX did to the snowboard genre, just adding that bit of in-your-face coolness. Your competitors are bloodthirsty, which leaves you being super aggressive to fend for yourself against these hooligans, and the rest of the game portrays this roughness of what this sport would feel like if you had to attend or enter the real thing.

A new vibe to the racing genre

While there is nothing special to the controller buttons layout, it does add a decent boost button that actually lasts a bit longer than, well… lets say Need for Speed titles. It also depends on what vehicle you choose how long the boost will last as motorbikes suck it up fairly quickly and rigs will push it for quite some time before depleting. You can also use the SixAxis controller’s motion sensing to steer your car by tilting it left and right, but it feels like an afterthought so I’d recommend you stick with the analog sticks. If you really want to play a game with decent controller tilting then buy yourself a Wii and Excite Truck…you’re wasting your time here.

As mentioned, you have Motorbikes, Rigs and Sand Masters, Buggy’s and all kinds of weird and wonderful vehicles that all handle very differently. The tracks are actually quite exceptional and give you the illusion of immense scale (yet again like SSX did for snowboarding games when it launched on the PS2 way back in 2001) with several routes to take depending on your vehicle. What I did find was that there weren’t really any simple or difficult tracks…they are all balanced and with there only being nine tracks (and another two for download) it will be easy to adapt to the different terrains.

Motorstorm online

Graphically the game is nice but we’ve seen it on the Xbox 360 before so it’s unfortunately not the PS3 title to showcase the power of the console, but what it does it does well. The soundtrack suites the theme quite well with the normal rock grunge music.

Gripes? You bet! With this type of game I imagined playing against some of my mates that came to visit as it has this pick up and play appeal to it…but…there is no offline multiplayer to be found! Zip, nada, nothing. In this day and age one expects it to have these small additions for a game you pay some of your hard earned cash for. However, what they did do is provide you with a twelve player online multiplayer mode which is quite awesome. Seeing that it’s free (hint, hint Microsoft) it just rolls off the tongue so nicely - “Motorstorm online.”

Offroad and online

Lets be honest, the PS3 has taken FOREVER to get its act together and Motorstorm is one of the titles which will be running in your tray until more games really start showing the power of this console.

If you like offroad, online, never have friends that visit and in general love racers then this is for you. If not wait around as I’m sure Motorstorm 2 will hit PS3 at some point in time and it should have an offline multiplayer option…it is 2008 you know!

Pros: Awesome online racing; massive scale; multiple routes.

Cons: Terrible loading times; no offline multiplayer.

Rating:
Contributor:	Dawid

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