Next Level Gaming - Article: Motor Storm Review

I missed the Playstation 3 system launch. I did not have the beans to fork out for a new Playstation 3 system (at the time it was big $$$). So I waited until the 80 Gig Playstation 3 system when it dropped to $500. After getting to know my new slick black PS3 system I must say that I am very impressed. And I have a new system that I love. With that said it comes with the pack-in Motor Storm. And while the game is a bit old (released some time ago) I feel it is only right to re-visit this great game and put up a review. After all, if you buy the 80 Gig system you’ll be playing this game as well. And I will tell you right off the bat that Sony did a great in packing this game in with the 80 Gig system....

So what exactly is Motor Storm and how does it stack up on the Playstation 3? Motor Storm is basically hardcore racing in the middle of the desert. Get ready to eat some dirt. Players will descend upon the Motor Storm Festival, a celebration of the alternative and extreme offroad racing culture. Throwing caution to the wind, players will take on a variety of racing fanatics and battle through chaotic, action-packed tracks to try and become the Festival champ. You race various games and try to qualify. Once you qualify other tickets will open up. Motor Storm is extremely easy to pick up on. Like most racing games you can select which vehicle you want to race. Each vehicle can either benefit you or it will handicap you. You also have to pick what vehicle you think will get you across the finish line in one piece. Using the smaller vehicles will allow you to drive on higher spots of the map with no problem. Large vehicles like the Rigs will allow you to drive down below in the thick mud with no problems. This matters because if you are on a bike and your driving in thick mud you will lose speed and it could cost you the race. So let me break down what types of vehicles you can drive in Motor Storm...

Motor Storm features the following vehicles:

MX Bikes: Good for speed. Handles like a charm but leaves you open for many crashes.
ATV’s: Similar to the Bikes, more stable and durable.
Buggies: Nice combination of speed and the ability to arce across rough places.
Rally Cars: Fast and lightweight. Not very durable though.
Racing Trucks: Powerful and heavy. Much slower then Rally cars.
Mudpluggers: Imposing vehicles that can drive over pretty much any terrain. Very slow.
Big Rigs: These things are monsters, squashes anything in its path. Slow as hell though.

I personally use the MX Bikes in each race. I leave myself open for more crashes but it is the vehicle with the most speed and it controls smooth as silk. Driving a bike also leaves you open to having your ass ran over by rigs and trucks. My character also had a bit of roadrage. Someone knocked into him and it appeared that the chatacter on my motorcycle flipped the driver off. Pretty cool... As you beat the various races on each ticket you will open up more vehicles in each class. Motor Storm also makes use of the Sixaxis motion abilities. But I have to say that it is pretty hard to master. I gave it a try and spun my controller around but it just did not have a good feel. It is a small gimick trying to be much like Excite Truck for the Nintendo Wii, but it does not compare to how you use the Wii controller for that game. With that said though I just keep that option turned off. It is pretty much worthless if you ask me. Some people might get a kick out of it though.

The various courses that you will be racing on are huge. Each one features sections that are high and low, meaning that you can race high up upon cliffs and drop down to deep valleys. Each lap takes a good while to finish as well. There is no forms of weather, which is kind of disappointing (we could have had some rain or snow, but hopefully Motor Storm 2 has that) but you have various times of day... Some races are at dawn while others are mid-day or at dusk. There is even a night course as well. I found that the night course is pretty hard because there are no lights and you can lose track of where the hell you are going. Some parts of the track features hair-pin turns that wrap around the edge of a mountain. No matter what part of the track you are on though you can easliy sense the speed of this game while you are racing. After about 10-15 races I pretty much fell in love with this game. I hate racing games that are fixed in (set tracks where you cannot go out of bounds) but you can pretty much go anywhere in Motorstorm.

Online Mode is where the real fun is. Since the Xbox I have become a huge fan of online gaming (not that Everquest/World of Warcraft crap though... I do have a life.) While I am mostly a Online FPS guy I never was attracted to online racing games. Motor Storm is fairly different though. I just like the feel mch better with a racing game where you can pretty much drive anywhere and your not stuck You can race with up to 12 players. As you all know Playstation 3 online play is free (sweet) and you can also use headsets for online mode as well. You can host a race and edit the various maps and modes. Pretty much all of the maps can have ambient changes as well. You can change it from night to day or have it cloudy or mid-day. I love tweaking with the weather of tracks in racing games so this is a nice little feature. You can also select how many laps you want as well as what vehicles (one type or you can use all). I played a bunch of online games with my bro in Maryland and laughed through the whole race. It is pretty fun trying to knock someone on a motor cycle off a cliff. Overall online mode is pretty good for Motor Storm.

Graphics:

Before I played this game (as well as setting up my PS3) I did a few tests. I first played the game on a standard TV set. I got in about an hour of gameplay on Motor Storm before I decided to move it to a 42" Plasma HDTV (at 1080p) using a HDMI cable. The game runs at 720p. The results were pretty mindblowing. On a standard TV Motor Storm looks pretty good. You still have the sense of speed and the really good graphics. But the HD difference is amazing. The games tracks are almost photo-realistic. From the various skies to the gravel and rocks that populates the ground. The game looks amazing and flowing with detail. One of the cool things about Motor Storm is the way the envorinment reacts to what you do. One example is that the tracks from each vehicle is left on the ground. If you knock something over (there are junk cars piled up in some spots) or you demolish a billboard it will stay that way until the end of the race. The mud is pretty cool in the game as well. I wiped out on a motorcycle and I watched as my body rolled down a muddy hill. The effects of the top mud falling apart as my body rolled down the hill was pretty amazing. While I am on the subject of mud, there is a ton of it in this game. It will splash up on your vehicle. If you are racing around on a motorcycle the mud will cover you from head to toe. It will also splash back onto the screen.

The vehicles in the game also look pretty good. They are not as detailed as they could be but they do the job. You have a range of different things to race with. Seeing each vehicle crash is a treat to the eyes. Watching a motorcycle crach into the side of a mountain has never looked so good. Your body will be tossed around (depending on what you are driving) and slammed as your vehicle will crumble and flip in a ball of flames. As I said before the crashes in this game look amazing. I also saw no frame-rate drop at all and no pop-up. The draw distance is pretty good as well. Overall Motor Storm looks pretty amazing.

Music and Sound:

Motor Storm kicks on a great sound system. The game features some really good songs that keeps the pulse racing as your racing. Like many racing games Motor Storm features some well-known artists from the music industry. The soundtrack includes Curve,Elite Force,Everytime I Die, Gluecifer, Hyper, Kings of Leon, Krafty Kuts, Monster Magnet, Nirvana, Pendulum, Pitchshifter, Primal Scream, Queens of the Stone Age, Reverend Horton Heat, Slipknot, Spiritualized, The Experiment, Trash Palace and Wolfmother.Not a bad list of music groups. Some of these tunes are great listening to while your racing across a mud-filled level, jumping across cliffs and over dried up streams. There is no custom soundtrack option, where you can use your own MP3’s. But I find that these days many people do not even care about that. The sounds of the game are also pretty good. The engines of the various vehicles roar and scream during each race. It is a racing game, so you pretty much expect nothing but loud noise anyway. So the bottom line is Motor Storm is pretty tight in the sound and music department.

The Bottom Line:

I was looking forward to Motor Storm for a while. I played the Demo a long time ago and was hooked to the graphics and nice gameplay. Having it as a pack-in with the 80 Gig PS3 was just a added bonus. Many people are comparing Motor Storm to the Nintendo Wii’s Excite Truck, but there is no comparison. Motor Storm leaves Excite Truck in the dust. The graphics are pretty sweet (especially on a HD TY) and the online gameplay is also pretty tight. Without a doubt one of the best racing titles for the Playstation 3.

Overall Motor Storm is a great addition to the Playstation 3 library and a pretty awesome racing game. A great game to have bundled with the 80 Gig PS3 system that shows off what the system can do.

[Review by Sean A. Foster]