Storm Warning

Review Dated: Sunday 14 September 2008
System: PLAYSTATION®3
Title: “MotorStorm® Pacific Rift Private Beta” / “MotorStorm® Pacific Rift Demo”
Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
Developed by: Evolution Studios Limited
Availability: European PlayStation Network Promotional Download *

* The choose few (thousand, so it seems) audience members for this so-called “Private Beta” were contacted by e-mail from around midday (UK time) on Friday 12 September 2008, & offered promotional vouchers codes to redeem via the PlayStation Network (valid for use until 11 October 2008).

Demo Title Release Date: Friday 12 September 2008
Download file size capacity: 617Mb
Genre: Racing (off-road)

Number of Players supported / Cars available:
1 Player Race (offline)
Event title: “Rain God Spires”; Race Type: Standard; Number of vehicles: 16; Laps: 2
Vehicles: One variety of the following classes of: a) Bike, b) Racing Truck, or c) Monster Truck

2 Player Race (offline)
Event title: “Rain God Spires”; Race Type: Split-Screen; Number of vehicles: 6; Laps: 2
Vehicles: Each player has differing varieties of: a) Buggy, b) Rally Vehicle, and/or c) Racing Truck

Commercial Release Date/Rating:
[US] 28 October 2008 (T)
[EU] 14 November 2008 (16+)
[JP] to be confirmed

1 to 4 Players supported Offline / 2 to 12 Players supported On the web

16 Players supported concurrently
(4 offline + 12 online to agree with the quoted “16-player on the web battling, and four-player split-screen play“?)

16 Events (Tracks) available
8 Vehicle Classes available (including previous classes from original “MotorStorm” title & new vehicle class added, the “Monster Truck”)

—
Review game-play time to date:
1.5 hours, then a further 30 minutes

Input controller(s) used:
a) Official Sony SIXAXIS™ wireless controller (UK supplied),
b) Official Sony DUALSHOCK®3 controller charging via console front-mounted USB port (Japanese import)

Output device:
26-inch, 11 year old, Cathode Ray Tube (”Fat” screen) Toshiba Television
—

Calm before the Storm…

I did like the first “MotorStorm“, probably not as much as former Sony chief of Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, but I was suitably prepared by the original promotion & months of lead-up marketing video footage to want, nay, need this title as a priority (alongside “Resistance Fall of Man“) as soon as I had bought my release day console. The original title developed by Evolution Studios (now part of Sony’s growing empire of first celebration development teams when brought in-house for a whopping 33 million US dollars with subsidiary Bigbig Studios) was the first PS3 title I played, and the first PS3 title I went on the web with. Although, to be fair, the debut night was filled with people who could not understand how to participate in an on the internet game […”What’s the [Start] button for again?”… “Oh, somebody has dropped-out with boredom, now we will all have to quit & restart”…], so I only got one race all evening.

I received the promotion code to download the playable demo (“Private Beta”) of “…Pacific Rift” by chance and, if I am honest, I could have waited for a full commercial release date, and then some, as I haven’t returned to the original “MotorStorm” so far this year. Apart from the new multiplayer local game option, that I did think was a limitation with the first title (especially as it always seemed to be an age before it is my turn again whilst waiting for each of my three kids to make it to the finish line this side of Christmas), I was nowhere near as eager to venture back into the driving (or riding) seat this time around as the soon-to-be released follow-up title didn’t seem to offer me anything else.

But, as Sony were kind enough to remember me in their mass mail delivery on Friday, it would have been rude not to at least download the demo, and “Rip it up in Paradise” at least once. The e-mail went on to state that I was welcomed to “…the island, a tropical paradise deep in the heart of the Pacific. This is a brand new racing location – diverse, dangerous and unpredictable - a unique and exciting location for the MotorStorm Festival”. So, I “off-roaded” some of the various videos I had been downloading to that point on Friday to my external USB hard drive, in order to make ample provision for what I thought was going to take at least one & a half to two ‘gigs’ of space of my on-board 60Gb capacity (going off other PS3 Beta Test versions I have been lucky enough to sample).

The e-mail content had me hooked… I was keen to “Rampage through 16 multi-route tracks across four diverse racing zones”, “Tear into the landscape with eight vehicle classes, including a devastating new Monster Truck”, “Rev it up for some reckless fun with split-screen action for up to four players”, “Race on the internet with up to 12 players”, and “Download new tracks, cars and liveries”. OK, so I wasn’t anticipating the latter option from the Beta Test demo, but it was going to be there in “autumn 2008”, so I would just overlook that for now.

Expecting a general say of euphoria for the PlayStation Network traffic on Friday afternoon/early evening, I waited until 11pm before kicking-off the massive… no wait, 617Mb download. 617Megabytes? Is that all? The download size for the playable demo of “Clive Barker’s Jericho” was larger at 821Mb, “Kane & Lynch: Dead Men” was 840Mb, “and “Haze” clocked-in at 1,557Mb. This wasn’t a good sign. Equally poor was the speed of delivery of the download. At 12:30am I gave up & fell asleep watching something or other on “Sky 4+1.5” or whatever the channel was called. As I was unavailable to devote a decent amount of PS3 gaming time for most of Saturday, I got up early this morning (Sunday) to see if a demo of such a small size could keep my attention for any longer than the three comparative titles (that, if truth be told, wouldn’t be difficult).

Start your engines…

Albeit, by definition of ‘demonstration’ version, and a Beta Test version at that, the limited “MotorStorm Pacific Rift” game-play would have benefited from the inclusion of a second event (track) of the new tropical environment in the Pacific known only as “The Island”. Additionally, the capability to play more than one human opponent in the offline/split-screen mode (in order to gauge if up to four players would be a viable option) would have been appreciated, but the developers did not just target me & my requirements, so just the provided single player mode, and two-player (horizontal) split-screen mode could be tested.

On the internet multiplayer game-play was not available to test, but it has previously been announced that there will be “a radical re-look at the whole MotorStorm on the internet experience, focusing on ease of use and breadth of game-play all while tearing it up in races up to 16 players”, or described as an “immersive online experience“, or some other marketing hype-nonsense-speak terminology putting the “PR” into “Pacific Rift“, ideal left to a session of boardroom “buzzword bingo”.

I will also add that any graphical improvements in terms of gloss or shine on the cars, or denser more intricate scenery, is prone to be lost on my aging visual display equipment, as well as my failing eyesight that was never going to be 20/20 to begin with (due to red/green & shade colour-blindness, and vision that is long-sighted corrected by prescription spectacles). So you’ll not find any image quality comparisons to the previous title, nor to an Xbox 360 side-by-side screen spot-the-difference (with the) competition either, as the MotorStorm franchise remains solely on the Sony console for this second outing!

For the record, my co-player in the two-player offline mode was one of my sons. At the grand young age of seven, he is very adept in most of my catalogue of PlayStation (One, 2, and 3) titles, that are mainly first person shooters, or games within the racing genre. His first impression was that “…Pacific Rift” was “very hard… much harder than ‘MotorStorm’ was”. Whether this is just because we’ve not played the previous title for quite a few months, or whether the improvement in handling of the in-game cars, and subtle changes to the overall realism in the driving experience (that, to be fair, was never that poor anyway) made the arcade-feel more true-to-life than before is debatable. I mention his (only) feedback for your information in any respect, but I certainly noted that the game is less forgiving when taking corners too wide at speed, especially over rough terrain. The back-end of the Buggy and the Rally Car vehicle classes certainly was more ‘twitchy’ than I recall meaning a slight lapse in concentration for only a second or two can cause a few places lost to the unforgiving and relentless console-controlled opponents (or my seven year old, as applicable).

The track on offer is, well, just like the first track (if not all of the tracks) of the first “MotorStorm” title, rugged & mountainous, only not as exciting the second time around. No water or mud effects, no “thick swamps, dense jungle, towering peaks, & steaming volcanoes” (as regularly quoted at the various gaming industry showcases); just jumps, jumps, corners, & more jumps. Cliffs, precipices, chasms, long drops, narrowing valleys, and lots & lots of smashes, crashes, and restarts. Same old, same old, you could say. But this is what made the first title so playable, and is what turned a “quick ten minute” test into a ninety-minute battle of wills between a sleep-deprived 30-something adult & his up-too-early-for-his-own-good son this morning.

When said youngest had returned to bed this evening, I returned to “The Island” to make sure what I had typed here was true to what I thought at the time this morning and, unfortunately, on a second viewing, I was more critical than before.

Best pedal foot forward…

A few of the precursory trailers for “…Pacific Rift” have made reference to the new landscape, and the additional of tree branches ready to remove rider from helmet (with head still in it), and overhangs/underpasses ready to take the roof (or, in my case, the bonnet) off a four-wheeled racer,

And yes, there are a few. And yes, they’re placed just right to catch you off-mud guard, and meet you slap in the helmet (head, or otherwise).

However, after a few laps of the only track on offer (in one of the three single-player automobiles, or one of the three other cars to trial in the local multiplayer mode) you realise where not to go, and how to keep your set of wheels in one piece regardless of how many times the in-game competitors try to knock you off course.

The concept of track-forks still exist for the adventurous (or foolhardy), and each branch of the circuit presents differing obstacles & hazards to navigate. Some routes are better suited to one vehicle class, and other detours from what might be perceived as the intended route are only passable if you’ve sufficient speed & ‘boost’ energy to clear a jump successfully. Try a higher route in a Monster Truck, for example, and you may not have enough power to reach a fast enough velocity to land safely off a ramp, or take a lower route on a bike and the undulating track might be designed to bounce rider & machine into a collision if too much speed is used. Slow down too much though, and the benefit of breaking from the main vehicle pack may be wasted. Something to learn from trial, and error. And I made plenty of those. Thank goodness for the inclusion of the [Select] button to reset the automobile back to the track, and in the long-term the “Restart Race” option from the ‘Pause’ menu.

Taking a spin as a bike rider offers the ability to turn corners quickly using either the D-pad direction buttons, or the tilt facility of the SIXAXIS controller. However, the “health & safety” rules for track racing are not adopted by all, & as soon as you meet a group of bigger, stronger, more metal-looking and, hence, greater mass & sharp-edged shaped competitors coming sideways into you at speed, then you realise the limitations & vulnerability of a two-wheeler very quickly no matter how good the ‘Boost’ button reacts when needed. Herein lies another danger too… keep your finger down on [X] to expel the ‘Boost’ energy for a faster ride too long, & an imminent explosion meets you head-on when your vehicle overheats. Not good! So, with one eye on the road ahead, one of the ‘boost’ gauge, and one on the surrounding competitors, you need to keep your wits about you at all times.

I also noticed vast disparity between collision impacts while racing in just head protection, a dust mask, & rolled-up sleeves [seriously… are these riders mad?]. Sometimes the rider can take immense amounts of physical punishment without as much as breaking sweat or anything else. The bike remains intact, and the rider remains defiant. Then on other occasions the slightest pebble in the track causes the rider to bounce off & fall headlong into some convoluted tumbling sequence not out of place in the PlayStation Network title “PAIN”. Also, mess up your timing in a jump & you can drop into a precarious situation between ledge & imminent death whilst participating in an ad hoc round of BBC TV’s “Kickstart” (but without Peter Purves congratulating you for not putting a foot down during the entire bunny-hop on one wheel back to safety).

OK, so you can now punch (‘attack’) left or right on a bike, or shunt (’ram’) in a similar way if in a larger automobile, but by the time you have set-up a hit, and timed it within a second of the perfect opportunity, you have crashed into somebody, or got shunted yourself. The capability for a motorbike rider to punch a quad-biker in the mush & send the four-wheeler into oncoming vegetation is pleasing nevertheless, but at times it is just good luck, rather than good management, to accomplish this. The capability to duck away from attacks from your opponents is also now available, but boxing-on-wheels has never been a genre I considered for a video game, so maybe trying to traverse the course without injuring yourself or your automobile might be seen by many as the primarily, if not only, objective. I don’t think winning a race by referring to further rules courtesy of The Marquis of Queensbury is going to catch on. In fact, winning isn’t the only deciding factor in the outcome within the full commercial game. For once, the taking part counts too! A new rating system is to be introduced that’ll be based on participation in a race, not just how near the player is to the finish line before crashing out at the last bend & watching the entire field pass with seconds to go. So, thankfully, this is going to be better than “Mario Kart Wii” (and just look how long that has been in the multi-format video game charts!).

Oh yes, and something that I never noticed in the original game, but it might have been the same as now… when on a bike, in the “…Pacific Rift” demo, the wheels don’t quite touch the ground meaning man & machine are in perfect harmony without making contact with the terrain! It is not that noticeable when playing as you’ve much more pressing issues to attend to, but when the race has finished & you are watching the bike go around the track automatically without intervention, then the fact that your are on some futuristic hover-bike just looks sloppy.

As mentioned above, you can now race in a Monster Truck, but it just acts so realistically in a sponge-like bouncey-tigger fun-fun-fun-fun-not-so-fun way you lose the majority of the other racers by the first bend and never catch up due to the mass of the automobile far out-weighing the torque on offer. This is the vehicle to use if you want to lose friends by running over their in-game player, but if they have the ability to out-manoeuvre your over-the-top wheels from the race-off, keeping ahead of you shouldn’t be a problem, well, on the sample track. If the undergrowth becomes over-growth, then the new car class will be a welcome addition to the existing roster, as it will literally just drive over anything. Where do you park a Monster Truck? Anywhere you want to. The end.

So, back to the Racing Truck; the only real ‘all-rounder’ available in the single player mode. It has the road-presence to knock bikes and mud-plugging buggies aside, but also has the performance to keep up with them too. It also can beat the Monster Trucks from the starting line, but so too can the delivery schedule for the “WipEout HD” project, so that’s not worth mentioning.

But, on my second time of loading the demo version, I started to notice faults when playing as a Racing Truck. The damage modelling was nowhere near as realistic as I would have expected. The Truck can accelerate hard to a fixed object, all momentum is lost on impact, and then seconds later when the automobile is at a standstill one or all of the windows will shatter & then the Truck will flip rear bed-over-hood. When objects are struck at speed & impact occurs, no marks are seen, and when drops from a height are taken (intentionally, or otherwise) the vehicle will either continue without pausing, or will instantly lose all four wheels & come to an abrupt stop seemingly defying one, if not all, of Newton’s Laws of Motion. The more I played as the Racing Truck, the more this annoyed me. I don’t recall being this critical with the original “MotorStorm” title, but I do have to bear in mind that this demo is still officially a Beta Test version. Maybe some polish and “jazz hands” are to be applied between now & the full public playable demo or, at the very least, before the Blu-ray editions are burnt & shipped to the high street & on the web outlets. The current collision physics engine needs tweaking, as in the present state, for want of a better phrase, it is ‘broken’.

Also, in the demo version tested, the crashes seem to take ages to reset you back to the track (offering a tap of the [X] button after a preset time), & in this playable demo version you can’t move the camera around the paused image of the damaged automobile shell. Maybe that is a limitation of just a 617Mb download. Alternatively, maybe that moveable camera rotation feature has been removed completely. I guess once you’ve used the feature once or twice, unless wrecked car/truck-nage is your thing, then you wouldn’t bother again, so perhaps making way for new features is some form of progress. It has been reported that the “Photo Mode” in the full release, for example, will be used to capture either a victory or a crash‘n’burn moment to share with your friends, so there must be some form of multi-angle camera positioning at some point during game-play.

The full commercial release is also to offer a “Free Play” mode where event ‘tickets’ can be created to result in a build-your-own race structure, even though the actual race courses are stated to change on a lap-by-lap basis anyway due to “in-game unpredic