Game Review: MotorStorm Pacific Rift

Gerard Campbell - The Press

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

For: PlayStation 3  

Score: * * * *

When the original MotorStorm came out, one of the most fun things was pausing the action moments after a vehicle had smacked into a giant rock. You got to see what I called the "component explosion" - nuts, screws, bolts and pieces of metal flying in all directions.

If you were lucky you'd also see the driver catapulting across the landscape.

So, too, with Pacific Rift. It has more of the same madhouse, flat-out and bump-and-grind racing. Taking the correct line is the key to victory and the wrong line inevitably means component explosions galore.

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Pacific Rift opens with one of the most stunning movies that I have seen. For a while, I was mesmerised by what looked like high- definition footage from some nature documentary with rolling green hills and a deep forested valley - until heavy helicopters flew in carrying four-wheel vehicles and ATVs, and they started ripping up the landscape!

This time, racing takes place in four zones on The Island: fire, air, water, and land, each with different hazards and perils that will keep you on your toes. The fire zone, for example, takes place around an active volcano with rivers of molten lava that will singe and burn your vehicle. Thank goodness for the water sprinklers dotted about the course.

As with the original MotorStorm, different vehicles are better suited to various terrain, and it often pays to select the right vehicle if you want to win. The racing, too, is so aggressive that if you crash too much or miss too many correct lines and drop back to the back of the pack you might as well forget about a win. It's unforgiving.

While the in-game graphics don't look as good as those in the opening movie, they are still great, with a huge amount of detail having gone into the vehicles themselves.

The original MotorStorm received criticism from some quarters that its online mode was nothing more than an after-thought and this has been rectified with Pacfic Rift, offering not only a comprehensive online mode but also a fun-tastic co-operative play mode where up to four of you can sit on the couch together and race around the tracks.

But as much fun as MotorStorm is, I have a niggle in the back of my head that developer Evolution Studios have played it a little safe by offering more of the same as the original, especially given that some outstanding off-road racing games have been been released this year (Pure as one example).

That said, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is a solid, fun-filled racing game that will please any speed freak.

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