Reviews// MotorStorm (PAL PS3)

Motor Storm is the best memory game in the PS3 launch line-up. Clearly, it's not ostensibly a memory game - but I’ll come back to that shortly, if I remember.

Motor Storm is a racing game. The action takes place in a ‘realistically modelled’ Monument Valley. But I went there for my holidays last year, and while they've certainly captured the feel of the place, I couldn't find an intricate network of ravines, ramps and ledges that were connected and navigable by automobiles in such a way as to create a thrilling desert racing experience. So, I must assume that the Monument Valley in Motor Storm has had some remodelling by an architect mindful of the needs of motorsport.

Motor Storm doesn't break with the traditions, long established and solemnly observed, of generations of driving games. You start with a small number of tracks available to you, and only by competing successfully on these can you unlock further tracks and more vehicles with which to progress through the game. So far, so what!? But if we check under the hood, MotorStorm has enough fuel in its tank to offer something exciting, if not entirely new, to the racing genre; and there's always that thrilling memory game aspect to remember...

So, Motor Storm takes place in Monument Valley which, while you may never have heard of it, you are very likely to have at least seen it. It's the place in the USA on the Utah/Arizona border that provides the most enduring images of the American West of the movies - and many western movies were filmed here (Fort Apache, The Searchers and Stage Coach). It's that sandstone red place of epic sunsets and towering buttes: rock formations that comprise a sloped pile of debris shed over aeons that surround the towering escarpment from which they were shed. You may not be familiar with them from the films of John Wayne, but you may recall them from the Bon Jovi video that starts with JonBon singing his little lungs out atop one (Wanted: Dead or Alive). They are also featured heavily in the opening of the second Mission Impossible movie - as crazy pocket scientologist Tom Cruise's stunt double hangs manfully from one.

Monument Valley provides one of the most breathtaking and awesome skylines in the world. Unfortunately Motor Storm is set in the muddy gullies and arid valleys at the feet of these towering works of erosion, so you don't actually get to see them while you are playing the game - which is a good thing, because if the game was to feature their awesomeness in high-res you'd find yourself stopping to gawp, and unable to concentrate. Evolution Studios has thrown in a nice high-res fly-by demo of parts of the valley, and it's a fine, fine thing to impress your mates with your new 1080p plasma.

You begin Motor Storm by selecting a ticket; each ticket has between one and four races on it. At the start of the game there are three tickets open to you. Placing in the top three is vital for you to advance; however, first place is required for a ticket to be marked with the satisfying ‘Completed’ stamp.