Reviews// MotorStorm Pacific Rift

The game options give you the, erm, option to put the music on sequential or random play, and to check or uncheck tracks for inclusion. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you preview the tracks before you decide whether to include them or not. And it doesn't announce the tracks on screen during game-play. So, unless you know which tracks you like and dislike by name, enabling or excluding them is a case of stabbing in the dark. Not a smart decision by the developers.

Sound dealt with, I have to mention Pacific Rift's graphics - they are really nothing special. It looks OK, and it does the job, but it's very rarely gorgeous and some of the water effects are laughably poor for a console like the PlayStation 3. This will really matter to some people. But these are probably the kind of people who have all the best equipment (none of it scuffed in any way) for a sport they are useless at. It doesn't matter! Sure, it'd be nice if Pacific Rift looked as gorgeous as Burnout Paradise, but it doesn't. Learn to deal.

The playing part of Pacific Rift is split into two main sections: Festival - which is where you'll progress to unlock new drivers, vehicles and events, and the Wreckreation area (which wins my bad pun of the month award). This features the online, freeplay and split-screen multi-player elements. And it is here that the fun begins.

Sure online play is great if you enjoy sitting in the dark, on your own, in your underpants listening to the muffled taunts of random strangers. But split screen-play enables a real social gaming experience, with real nuanced banter, and goading from real people who you know personally, and actually like. Or at least liked until they purposefully rammed you and themselves off the edge of the track at the start of The Rift course.

Two-player split Pacific Rift screen is sublime. It is the greatest gaming experience I have ever had in my life. Three and four-player are good, but for some reason when everything gets shrunk down that small, it all seems too dark, and too fast, and too far away. Even hunched up close to our 50" Plasma, four-player split-screen was too much of a stretch to be truly enjoyable - but that didn't stop us playing it.

Boost explosions were one of the few aspects of MotorStorm that required tactical thought. Put simply, boosting makes you go faster, boosting too much increases your boost temperature gauge. Getting too hot makes your vehicle explode. Exploding (usually) makes you lose position. Using your boost tactically or wisely (when your wheels were on the ground!) meant the difference between victory and ignominy.

In MotoStorm different vehicles overheated at different rates. Motorcycles, their engines surrounded by air, could boost for longer than buggies, for instance. In Pacific Rift, this aspect of the game is given even more prominence due to the existence of environmental factors such as water and lava.

Lava!? Yes, you heard me right; some of the tracks in Pacific Rift have bubbling hot magma oozing across them. This introduces two factors to the game-play. One, lava is simply a no go area, if you so much as touch it, you're a goner. This makes jostling for position around tight bends a much more risky proposition.

The other thing is lava is HOT, so being near it, or jumping over it increases your boost temperature. This opens up whole new strategic elements to the game, a longer route that avoids lava may enable you to boost more.