Philoking.com

I am a little late getting this review in. I have been playing this game voraciously for a few weeks now. I had written a few weeks ago that I had finally found a game I liked for PS3, Resistance: Fall of Man. Well, I have to say that I have hit two winners in a row. When Dawngrrl and I go to Hastings, our local game and movie store, it’s become second nature for Dawngrrl to go straight to the Xbox 360 glass, and I go to the PS3 glass.

This day in particular, I was quite excited to see a used copy of Motor Storm on the shelf. We had played the demo and really enjoyed it, but as many games as we buy, it’s hard to plunk out $60 every time I see something pretty behind the glass. We save new purchases for must have games and with the track record my PS3 had so far, 4 purchases, 3 trade-ins, I skeptically waited to find this game used.

The initial reaction? You can read no further, hop in your car, and pay the full price of admission, this game is worth it. I don’t want to say that it’s the best driving simulator I have ever played, ahem, Gran Turismo….but as far as fun goes, this game is off the meter. The graphics are truly top notch and the game play is fast and furious, terrible pun, I know.

Before I get into all of the things that Motor Storm excels at, I do want to mention the negatives, there are a few. The first thing to note is the load times are pretty painful. Even the act of choosing your vehicle suffers from long lags before the next vehicle appears, but the track load times are the worst.

The next thing to ding it on, is that the game play structure. This game has only one mode. A linear race to unlock vehicles and tracks mode. Of the over 150 vehicles available to you, only a handful, about 16 or so, are available at start. For those of you with the arcade mentality that just want to load up, select a cool ride, a cool track and jet…..you are going to be pretty disappointed that your choices are very slim in the beginnings. This game would have done well to have a few other game modes for you.

The last thing to say as a hit, but still by no means a reason against purchase, is that the motorcycles are very difficult to control. After some practice you get better, but it’s pretty tough. Each track is split into tickets, and you have to complete each segment, usually on a different vehicle, at a 3 or higher finish, to proceed. You might find yourself in quite a few races before you can move on. I caught on pretty quickly, but Dawngrrl had trouble adapting to the really sketchy controls.

Not really a negative, but an observation, the game play curve is also somewhat out of whack. I played through probably the first 7 tickets with nothing less than a 1st place finish on every segment of every ticket (not all on the first try of course) only to find that the second race on the 8th ticket I can do no better than 11th after quite a few tries. Talk about frustrating!

Those points aside, this game is really fun. The action is very fast. The AI is fun and punishing, the fellow racers are by no means patsies. They will ram you, run you into rocks and spin you out without a hint of conscious. This makes some of the races frustrating but really fun.

Back to the point of graphics, this game is truly gorgeous. The textures are very high quality making the fast moving track realistic and interesting. You speed along, but can’t help try to take in all of the scenery. The vehicles themselves are of equally high quality with the addition of awesome physics and great lighting effects. I found a few issues with shadows, but they hardly detracted from game play.

Issues with controller size aside, the controls are easy and intuitive. I do wish the PS3 had placed the left analog stick where the 360 does, but that’s just preference for someone with larger hands.

This game is worth it. I would have a hard time parting with it so I wouldn’t expect to be lucky and find one used like me. Regardless, it’s worth the $60. I hope you at least rent it and give it a shot, it’s a lot of fun.