Motorstorm: Pacific Rift

Motorstorm : Pacific Rift : An offroad racing game. Yep. An offroad racing game is Motorstorm Pacific Rift.

Story : There doesn’t seem to be a storyline, so lets invent one. The Coors Light Offroad Sex Party Power Team is throwing their latest mystery party contest (the ones that are always on commercials and boxes every season) at an island in the Pacific for a weekend of intervehichle offroad racing excitement and worry-free sex when the evil Dr Von Nofunhowser arrived, threatening to ruin the Power Team’s weekend with GLOBAL WARMING. The only way to thwart Dr Von Nofunhowser’s plans for warming their beers is to engage in exciting offroad races while generic alt-rock tracks play in the background. None of this makes sense but storylines in racing games don’t have to make sense, in fact I’d be a bit upset if there was a story in a racing game that didn’t involve a supervillain’s plans being inexplicably trifled with by means of a race.

The cutscene that plays in the background of the main menu details a lot of partying and racing fun in what I presume is “The Festival” but The Coors Light Offroad Sex Party Power Team isn’t letting you into the shenanigans, after all, you didn’t find the golden bottle in your box of Coors Light.

No, you’re relegated to merely racing. “The Festival” is but a series of races from four different challenges. Completing races and their assigned challenges earns points to improve your rank, of which doing so will open up more races and challenges. In reality, what you’re doing is racing on the same 16-odd tracks repeatedly, but with a different bonus objective like “finish before this time” or “race without crashing more than three times.” So in essence, you’re grinding the same tracks over and over again, and not to my delight.

Motorstorm : Pacific Rift is an ordinary offroad racing game; one that took a look at the numerous ATV vs MX bizarro land crossover games and thought that the world needed one more because the dirt graphics in those previous games wasn’t pretty enough. There are absolutely no brand name vehicles, just “ATV”,” Bike”, “Monster Truck” and other complete failures to give these rides an identity beyond their stereotypes.

There’s also decided lack of vehicle customization, which delighted me, because I know nothing about car parts and feel intimidated when a game like Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo throws at me X number of ways to customize my tires, shocks and rear-view mirror. So this is definitely an arcade-style racer, one where you need not study special drifting techniques to turn your ride through a corner. You have a “Go” button, a “Brake” button, and a lot of dirt in between.

In my dilapidated mind, a good arcade racer should be accessible, fast, and exciting. Pacific Rift gets the first part right but the latter two succumb to the vile schemes of Dr Von Nofunhowser. Vehicles feel a bit slow and sluggish, going off a ramp didn’t have the exhilarating feeling that catching big air should, and for an off-road racer, there was never any sense of “getting dirty”. These are all hard things to explain thinking about it, but when you look back at some of the more recent racers, the Burnouts and ATV’s of the world, you realize that some smart use of camera and particle effects contributed to a fun and nasty experience. In contrast, Motorstorm feels too…clean, dull, uninteresting. Sure the environments look fantastic but someone driving a motorcycle at 120 miles/hour has more important things to look out for than the details in the leaves.

I had to think long and hard to figure out what it was that made Motorstorm unique. Other games have done the multiple types of vehicles big or small gimmick before, and did it with much more personality and gusto. Even collision battles…knocking someone off their bike with your rally truck isn’t quite as satisfying as I’d like. There actually is one interesting gameplay mechanic; you can press the turbo button for as long as you can before your ride explodes from the heat and pressure. Water can help cool down your vehicle, while magma and GLOBAL WARMING conspire to warm you up to death, so the people that will succeed the most in Motorstorm are the ones who study the tracks and develop the best and least fuel-efficient plan of action.

Confused as to how a game with so little desire to stand out can garner so much publicity, I looked to the internet in hopes of finding out answers as to why people care about Pacific Rift besides “it’s the sequel to a game people were excited about back in a time when the Playstation 3 didn’t have much to be excited about.” The best I could garner was the claim that the tracks would change as the assorted automobiles wore down the roads. Upon hearing this, I felt absolutely terrible for the people who toiled in an office for hours on end designing these dirt physics because, well…I didn’t notice this. Have we ran out of new and groundbreaking ideas for racing games that we have to create barely-noticeable shifting dirt physics as a way to stand out?

The online play is relegated to simply racing other competitors in any of the given tracks. There’s nothing flashy, but at least the Power Team have long since prevented Dr Von Nofunhowser scheme to ruin their good times with lag, as the online experience is mostly smooth. I guess there’s also potential for Motorstorm as a party game, as you can play four-player split screen and not have the same fear one would have with a Gran Turismo or Midnight Club; settling for using the most basic of cars while your buddy who owns the game picks his souped-up ride and drugs you with nitrous oxide.

All and all, Motorstorm : Pacific Rift is about as interesting as soil. It’s a functional racing game that can be pretty to gawk at but it lacks the thrills and excitement of better arcade-style racers like Pure…or at least the demo to Pure. It’ll suffice in the absence of a better racing game, but like an actual Coors Light party, it’s not quite as exhilarating as the commercials would lead one to believe.

Pros : No purchase necessary to get invited.

Cons : Must be legal drinking age.

3 ½ stars

The Coors Light Offroad Sex Party Power Team will return!