Reviews// MotorStorm Pacific Rift

Aside from split-screen multi-player most of the other "new" features of the game are frippery and distraction. And where most of them are concerned, the term 'new' is hardly applicable, since almost every single one of them has been seen before in other racing games. Once again there's very little new or original in Pacific Rift; once again this is not a criticism. Just as with MotorStorm, I will fight tooth and claw and to the bloody death to anyone who tries to take the joypad from me.

During the review period, Evolution invited us to play the developer in an on-line MotorStorm, and I happily tried to do so. Sadly, the experience was beset with connection and server problems. What was available seemed similar to the original MotorStorm on-line experience, which works well enough, and there's no real reason to expect that when this is on the live servers it won't work seamlessly. That said, I am still firmly of the opinion that same room fun is where it's at, rather than online cybersex, if you are swinging it MotorStorm style.

One last word for Sony and Evolution Studios. When you guys come to develop Motorstorm 3 (and I hope you are already underway with it!!!) please don't cram it with trivial and annoying new features that at best add nothing to the game-play, and at worst spoil it.

Learn from Burnout, which changed every release, but never markedly improved until Burnout Paradise was released. Just give us some new tracks, and some new vehicles, and maybe some female driver characters with a little less clothing, and we'll be happy. If it's not imperfect, don't mess with it. In fact, why not just let us buy new tracks as you complete them from the PlayStation Store, and save the next major release until you can make this thing look as good as it should?

[i][b]Conclusion
Pacific Rift doesn't look anywhere near as good as it should. It boasts very little in the way of originality. But in terms of playability and addiction, this is one of the greatest games I have ever played, and it is unlikely to be out of my PS3 for many many months to come.[/b][/i]

SPOnG Score 95%


^Footnotes
* While I'm WTFing, WTF does 'sophomore' even mean? According to Dictionary.com it means "a second effort or second version", which is what I understood it to mean. It's the etymology that bothers me. It's one of those unashamedly American words that is creeping into English. Now I don't have an issue with that kind of thing on the grounds of rampant cultural imperialism; although I am pissed off that American has become "English" and we English apparently speak "British English".

Earth Zone

How can there be such a thing as "British English" when the Scots, Welsh and Irish each have their own languages? I mean do the Canadians speak French and people from France speak "French French"? Do the Brazillians speak Portuguese, and those who hail from Portugal speak "Portuguese Portuguese"? No, of course not. So let's be clear, you hamburger-eating invasion monkeys, English is the language spoken in England, by English people. Once you start adding "z"s and deleting "u"s and introducing "sophomores" it's American you are speaking, or American English, if you so prefer. I know you have "Californian Champagne", but there's a sick irony in the country most under the influence of corporate control, most flag-waving for DRM and copyright extension stealing wholesale other countries' intellectual property. I use many Americanisms myself, but sophomore has no apparent etymology, no logical derivation. It's not from the Greek, or the Latin, or the French, though Dictionary.com suggests that it is derived from sophism, which means a false argument or fallacy. How does that come to mean second year at college, or inferior follow-up album.




<sup>*|* WTF is the "holiday season" anyway? Get a grip Muslims, Jews, Shintoists. It's Christmas, the day when white Anglo Saxons celebrate the fictional birth of our imaginary magical man. If you don't like it, the answer's simple, make your imaginary magical figurehead and his/her attendant festival more popular than ours.

(Ed. Actually, from a retail point of view, you'll probably need to deal in the facts of Hanukkah for the Jews, Al-Hijira and Ashura for the Muslims, the festival of Shiva for the Hindus... and possibly Burns Night for the Scots if we're tipping into the January sales... but Burns was, of course, the odd one out – what with him not being imaginary. Come to think of it, wasn't Jesus a Palestinian jew?... oh, it's all too bloody complicated and no one reads these footnotes anyway...)</sup>