Review: MotorStorm (Playstation 3)

In this review, we get down and dirty in the Playstation 3 game, MotorStorm. We find out how well this racing game plays.

This game was released in 2007 and would kick off a small series. It was also the subject of a first impression video as well.

There isn’t really much of a story that we noticed with this game. There is a hint of storyling in the game, though. Essentially, you get a ticket to come to the MotorStorm festival in Monument Valley. The event itself is fictional, but the location is from Utah. Think of those dusty valleys and tall rock formations. Presumably, your goal is to be the best driver in the entire festival.

The game starts you off with three tickets. In all, there are 21 tickets to be had. Each ticket contains anywhere between 1 to 4 events. To our knowledge, the only ticket that has one event is the first ticket. After that, the lowest number is two. To earn the remaining tickets, you need to to one of two things: either score enough points to unlock the next ticket or score a certain medal color for every event in a given level. You earn points by qualifying in events. You get the maximum points by placing first.

In all, there are four levels (fifth one is a bit debatable as it’s not technically depicted). You start off with level 1 which is the easiest. Level 2 is an intermediate level. Level 3 is generally the hard difficulty. Finally, level 4 is the extremely hard difficulty. Where the game gets a little vague is the final ticket. It just has its own color, but doesn’t show an actual level. You could call it level 5 because it is, after all, very hard.

In the first event, you can choose which vehicle class you wish to race in. In this game, there are 7 vehicle classes: Bikes, ATVs, Buggies, Rally Cars, Trucks, Mud Pluggers, and Big Rigs. While each class offers a small number of vehicles to choose from, there really isn’t much of a difference between vehicles in terms of overall performance. At most, you can get a very slight difference in terms of center of gravity and how well it can either block opponents or how well it can narrowly go through obstacles (width). This difference is so subtle, it’s almost not even worth mentioning.

You can basically separate these vehicles into three different categories: light weight, medium weight, and heavy weight vehicles.

The light weight vehicles, namely the bikes and ATVs, generally go through the higher roads where the surfaces are bumpy, with jumps, and filled with windy turns. You’ll want to avoid the mud as much a possible when you do drive these vehicles because they just don’t get any grip (making acceleration and turning extremely difficult). Still, you can most easily manipulate your vehicle while in the air with these. Bikes have the best handling and have great acceleration while the ATVs have a bit better top speed and stability.

The medium weight vehicles, which consist of the buggies, rally cars, and trucks, are good all rounders. They can handle most terrain reasonably well, but have little in the way of specialties going for them. So, if you are going up against a vehicle that specializes in that surface, they’ll probably perform worse. Still, you get the most options with these vehicles during the race. Rally cars have generally poor handling and don’t necessarily handle the bumps all that well, still, they have excellent top speeds. Buggies have good acceleration, but are a bit more prone to the bumps. Trucks are similar to cars, but can handle turning a bit better. However, they are more prone to rolling and are less stable. Personally, I think the trucks are generally the worst vehicles in the game, but are still worthy of being used in races.

Finally, there are the heavy weight vehicles. In this category, you have your mud pluggers and big rigs. These vehicles are best to bully the competition by running them off the track. They also take hits from other vehicles the best – especially the big rigs. These vehicles can throw debris around like tin cans (depending on the object of course) and can handle the mud the best. Just beware that their handling does leave a bit to be desired and their stability can cause problems. Good thing you can ram those rigs through just about anything because the routs that are the straightest are generally cluttered with that debris.

While some events (namely the ones that feature a golden helmet) allows you to pick and choose which vehicle class you want to drive in, most events chooses the class for you. Each event also picks the class and number of opponents as well. So, generally, you get to play every class whether you like it or not.

Additionally, this game only has 8 venues. Each venue has a number of different routes. Each rout will be friendly to one kind of vehicle or another. So, your racing experience, depending on how well you stick to ideal routs, will vary. There isn’t much in the way of advantages between routs, so if you stick to the rout that is the most friendly towards your vehicle, you’ll generally do quite well.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that there are subtle shortcuts in different tracks. Most of these shortcuts involve changing routs at critical parts of the track. For instance, in Dust Devil, if your vehicle compels you to take the lower rout towards the end of the track and compels you to take the high road after, you can actually drop from the rock formations towards the end early so you can take advantage of the inner lane. This as opposed to taking the roundabout rout which forces you to re-enter the main rout on the outside.

Another example is rock hopper. On the last jump before the first 90 degree turn, you can hit the booster and jump from the outer rout to the inner rout (the jump is long, but you can make it) to the inner rout. This will allow you to take advantage of the outer route for heavy vehicles while still taking advantage of the inner loop turn anyway. This helps shave time off your laps and even helps you stay in first despite the glitching going on during that turn.

One thing to be wary is that not all routs give you an advantage. For instance, at the beginning of Sidewinder Gulch, there is a natural rock formation that also serves as a ramp. Blast through the wooden barricade, hit the booster and you’ll jump from one rock ramp to another. It’s a cool little rout that quickly takes you back to the high road rout after. Unfortunately, as you re-enter the track, you’ll probably see your competition blasting past you as you find yourself trying to catch up after. So, you need to find out which rout is ideal as you go through each track.

Luckily for you, this game does have a difficulty curve that allows you to learn these things. Generally, when you are going through the level 1 difficulty, you are simply finding your rhythm and getting used to how different vehicles handle. Towards the end, you’ll also be likely figuring out the tracks as well. By level two, you should be figuring out the different routes and which vehicle works best for which rout. By the end of level two, you’ll probably be starting to figure out decent race lines that helps you not only keep leads, but also reduces your need for boost.

This is all great for newer players as that will help give them a chance to get a good handle of the game early on. By level three, the competition gets fierce and the elastic band effect of opponents becomes very apparent. Not only will those opponents always find a way to catch up, but they’ll also start ramming your vehicle – even ganging up on you from time to time to try and stop you from taking the gold. Level 4 is where your patience really gets tested as the competition goes from fierce to downright unfair at times. It’s less you against 11 – 13 opponents and more you against the entire pack. Expect anything from getting sandwiched and rammed into rock walls to even getting dog-piled by two thirds of the entire pack. It wouldn’t be a surprise if some players rage quit by then in all honesty.

By the time you reach that last ticket, you might be a bit like me and find yourself that you can actually manipulate the AI to your advantage. For example, during a level 4 any vehicle Grizzly race, I always rejoined the track right when a big rig blocked my path. This always causes me to collide and blow up. However, if I find some way of slowing down during my descent to the mud pit (an unfortunate swerve or a light clip on a rock wall), the rig ends up speeding by ahead, allowing me to fly through and get on that next ramp.

Another trick I started figuring out is boosting at certain bottlenecks during Sidewinder Gulch. The opponents at certain parts of the track will boost to keep up. Unfortunately for them, their handling isn’t perfect. This winds up causing them to clip a rock or smack straight into a boulder or fly off a ledge as they try to maintain their distance ahead of me.

A more general trick I ended up uncovering is swerving left and right whenever an opponent is intentionally slowing down to block you. They’ll try and keep your passing path blocked no matter what. If you do it all right, you can cause an opponent to spin out, allowing you to slip by without a rivalry.

All this over top of the dirty tactics you can unleash on opponents already playing dirty. You can easily give them a taste of their own medicine. This includes forcing them to have a head on collision with an obstacle by moving gradually to the side of the road. Another standard move is getting a corner of your vehicle to touch the side of their rear bumper. After that, just steer sharply into the vehicle, forcing them to spin out. Don’t forget that square button while on an ATV or bike will allow your rider to take out another rider with a nice good old fashion punch.

Helping you is the boost. Technically, you have unlimited boost throughout the game. However, there are limitations to this. For one, you have to wait 10 seconds after the start for your charge to boost. After that, you have to keep an eye on heat. Your boost will show as small greenish yellow flames with no heat. As the nitro heats up, your exhaust will change to orange to red to, finally, purple. Your gauge will show you your heat. If you overheat, then your engine will explode. This isn’t actually entirely a bad thing, though. If you are near the finish line, and the race is close, you can intentionally overheat your engine for a small speed boost. This can help your burning wreckage sail across the finish line in first.

Generally, beating this game is frustrating, but possible. It might involve a little bit of luck as well and using every advantage you can find. If you are successful, then you’ll be treated to a credit roll as well as flyover shots of various rock formations. That’s… all you get and it causes people to say that the game doesn’t award you with anything for winning.

For me, this is an interesting, though flawed game. On the positive side of things, you do get a huge variety of vehicles to race in. What’s more, you get a nicely expansive set of tracks that features multiple routs. A lot of racing games in the PS2 and GameCube era generally feature linear tracks. Occasionally, you get the odd game here and there that features a designated “shortcut” or two such as what you’d see in games like Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. On the multiple routes front, this game brings back the racing magic found in the N64 era such as Beetle Adventure Racing or the Rush series. It’s nice to see this style of track building starting to return to racing games again after a whole generation of seemingly being left behind.

Probably the only thing I know of from the PS2/GameCube era that has racing and has multiple routs is found in the SSX series, but that’s about the only games I’ve played from that era that has this.

The specialized routs for specific vehicles during the race isn’t exactly new. We’ve seen this while playing Hot Wheels Turbo Racing. However, during that game, it was a patch of rough terrain only meant for 4×4 vehicles. This game does take this concept and make it a major draw to the game as opposed to a small side feature that can be discovered by players if they look hard enough. So, it’s interesting to see this concept get explored once again. I honestly missed that aspect of racing games where you had that concept of multiple routs throughout the entire course.

Another concept I liked about this game is the use of multiple different vehicles. Again, it’s not exactly a new concept. After all, I did see this concept on the N64 game, Diddy Kong Racing. In that game, you had a kart, a hover craft, and a plane. This game is different in that all the vehicles can be found during the same rout. So, instead of just having a different racing experience depending on the track, you have a more “rock paper scissors” style of racing which plays up vehicles strengths and weaknesses. So, in that regard, it is more or less its own game because it incorporates such a level of complexity.

While that is all going towards why this game is actually a good game to play, I’m not here to tell you that it’s a perfect game in every way. In fact, we certainly don’t have a perfect game on our hands.

Probably the first thing that is noticeable is the tracks surface can be a bit buggy at times. Depending on the vehicle, you might be speeding towards what looks like a smooth ramp. However, once you get to the ramp and go to take off, it’ll be like you drove head on into a wall, causing your vehicle to explode. This can easily cause any players to simply throw their hands up in the air to say, “What did I even do?” Tracks that are seemingly notorious for that include The Tenderizer and Sidewinder Gulch. So, not only are you fighting for first place, but you are also having to avoid some of these glitched terrains as well.

Another more commonly cited problem is the AI. Personally, I’m used to elastic band AI, so the catch up mechanism doesn’t bother me that much. In fact, it forces you to change your strategy a little. Specifically, unless you are correcting a bad turn or making sure you make a jump, there’s almost no point in using a boost while in the lead. The opponents will catch up at some point no matter what, so you might as well have a “full” tank of nitro when they do.

For me, the AI loses points with the overall team aggression towards you in later difficulties. For most games, the difficulty increases by making the AI drive more efficiently or have better statistics all around. In this game, not so much. You can have opponents intentionally explode in front of you, blocking your path, perform a rolling blockage and driving into a wall in a suicidal way, cause you to swerve out of control, intentionally ram into you, braking while in front of you, etc. I get incorporating a little rivalry by fighting over ideal race lines, but this level of aggression makes this game less fun in the end.

Having half of your opponents intentionally smashing into you in an effort to slow you down while the other opponents try and break away is not only annoying, but downright unfair at times. This is partly combined with the fact that the opponents also take advantage of automatically catching up to you anyway. I personally think the difficulty could have been better thought out in the end. This is because it feels like the game relies on luck more than skill as you get to the hardest races in the game. There’s a big difference in feeling between, “Hey, I won the race because of the skill I learned” vs “Hey, I won the race because of a fluke towards the end.”

Finally, there is the ending. You work hard to get that ending and all you get is a simple gallery of flyover video’s and credits. I can’t say it’s as disappointing as Top Gear 3000, but this game doesn’t even try to build up to a good climax. It just throws a few sentences at you at the beginning and throws the credits up at the end. Top Gear 3000 offered buildup while this game didn’t even offer that.

Still, it’s more than possible to find enjoyment in this game. The variety in the vehicles and the track design should be things that make this game praiseworthy. What’s more is that this also lays some interesting groundwork for future games as well. Even the difficulty curve during the first half of the game is quite well done. However, the AI, glitchy terrain, and the ending does spoil the party a fair bit. So, a game worth checking out even if it isn’t exactly perfect.

Graphically, this game is quite good. The environments, though a bit on the repetitive side, are quite well realized. The terrain offers objects that can be moved that stay moved throughout the race. Additionally, textures like tire ruts are also constantly changing the look of the track as you race. You also get screen splatter depending on what the vehicles kick up. Probably the biggest highlight, is the different weather conditions. While no rain or snow, you do get morning, noon, sunset, night, and even cloudy conditions.

Probably the only issues on the graphics side of things are the frame rate drops whenever there are either a lot of vehicles on the track, or there is a good amount of explosions happening. The frame rate drops can be quite severe at times. Additionally, I’ve noticed that textures can get a little buggy at times. An example is the thin objects in either Mud Pool or Sidewinder Gulch. It doesn’t happen often, but typically happens at the start of the race. Finally, the camera occasionally slips into a null/void space. As a result, you see that standard no texture mess on occasion. It fixes itself, but you do see it from time to time.

Despite this, the graphics are generally very solid, though. The errors don’t happen that often. The most frequent is the frame rate drops. Even then, it only happens on occasion.

Audio is decent. The music selection is a pretty mixed bag. I think the only memorable track is the track Pendulum – Slam. The only other track that comes close to being memorable is probably Slipknot – Before I Forget. Even then, I think I might enjoy the track while racing, but afterwards, I’m not sure how well I’ll (no pun intended) remember that one after the game is over. Meanwhile, the sound effects are quite good. However, there is no voice work to be had in this game. Even by PS2 standards, that can be pretty cringe-worthy. So, a decent effort all around.

Overall, this game does offer an overall enjoyable experience. It’s got great concepts such as the tracks with multiple routs, the multiple classes of vehicles, and the ability to simultaneously race every class. Meanwhile, the glitchy terrain, the sometimes unfair AI at harder difficulties, and the lack of getting anything at the end of the game is pretty disappointing. The graphics are great, but suffer from minor bugs. Also, the audio is pretty decent all around. So, a pretty solid game all around.

Overall
Furthest point in game: Completed gold on every race.

General gameplay: 20/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5

Overall rating: 74%

Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.