Motorstorm Pacific Rift

Very fun arcade racer. Graphics are mostly great (sometimes mind blowingly great). The sense of speed is amazing. The branching paths sometimes gets confusing - gotta spend some time learning each track - which is probably a good thing. Online works great. Everything about this sequel is better than the first game.

just ordered this, going a bit game buying mad at the moment.

also ordered Fuel, which i hear is not as good but i thought i'd try it anyway.

Enjoyed the first motorstorm, although the bikes were really hard to control. but it was a top speed blast, much like the 4x4 racer(forget the name) i had on the Dreamcast which was all about using turbos at the right time.

this game is amazing and everyone should own it

ya i have some friends who are ~coocoo~ for this

I am cuckoo for this - played it every day at a friend's house and borrowed it for months. I'm still waiting to buy it if the price ever comes down, but it hasn't. I think it's awesome, though. The multiplayer is great if you have roommates too - probably the best split-screen game I know of on the PS3, great fun overall.

I bought Pure instead since it was cheaper. Bad move.

You guys are making me want to play this more. My one real problem with the game though (and this carriers over from the first one) is that it's still too easy to crash and blow up your vehicle. It's really hard to finish a race without blowing up at least a few times(!) and that always takes me out of the game a little bit - especially because some of those crashes don't always feel like your fault and they aren't consistent between what you crash and bounce off of. or crash and blow up from.

Anyhow, two new paid DLC track packs on the way... http://blog.us.playstation.com/2009/06/12/motorstorm-pacific-rift-making-tracks-with-the-speed-and-adrenaline-expansions/

yeah agree with that, doesn't help when it skips to some strange camera view for the crash either.

Just got it today, flip it wants me to download half a gigs worth of update. uh.

lol i keep going the wrong way. It doesn't seem as fast as the original.

some great looking vehicles though, and woah how many tracks!?

Going back to this for the first time in five or six months, I now remember the things that made me give up on it (after being initially impressed). Mainly, unless you've really memorized the tracks and track paths, most of them have sections that get visually confusing, which leads to you driving off the edge or into a wall helplessly and blowing up and basically having no chance to get back into the race (if online). With such long tracks, if you slip to the back of the pack, it's quite boring to helplessly race for another four or five minutes without seeing another car and still not even being able to finish the race. I also forgot that the game kicks you after each ranked race and you have to go through the minute or two minute long section of trying to hook into another race, which usually ends up being with the same eight or so people you were racing against two minutes ago anyway - it's a stupid system. Finally , I just don't quite enjoy the arcadey way the vehicles control - for me, basic things like cornering just feel too loose and that gets frustrating as well.

Basically it comes down to, if I have my ps3 on, why wouldn't I just play WipeOut HD, a much more aesthetically pure game / a game much more to my tastes. I did find a return to the bro atmosphere of Motorstorm a bit of a drag.

Not having a great deal of fun with this, oh well. I'll try Fuel tonight and see how it compares.

Most of my complaints are what Jeff said about the crashing and course design, but I just find the whole driving experience extremely dull, even the corners are unexciting.
I've always been a single player type of person and they've completely fobbed us off in this game, there's no atmosphere with the Festival section at all.

Perhaps the multiplayer brings it out more, but I'll never bother to find out.

did u try pure jeff?

that game seemed kinda similar to this but i found it way easier to control and insanely fun.

jeff didn't like pure cos he hates fun

(:P)

The thing about Pure was I just didn't like the trick system - I found it repetitive and dull. If I remember right you had to pull down on the stick to charge your jumps, release then press various buttons or flick the stick in various ways while in the air, careful not to repeat the last trick you did? For me that's too much, yet it basically followed the same pattern for every race, which made it feel kind of pointless. Honestly, I think I would have enjoyed Pure more if there was just the boost, as the tracks and vehicles were fine. The online however was poorly designed as you had to grind through the single player campaign to unlock higher powered vehicles to use them online, so the races were very unbalanced (and I never played it enough to unlock the top vehicles).

I prefer Mario Kart Wii.

I do think Pure and Motorstorm are similar in that both make a decent first impression, but both (when thought about) are lacking something. If I had to choose I'd definitely choose Motorstorm for the better online experience and more interesting tracks with a greater feeling of speed and more simplified, logical, natural controls, but can see why some would prefer Pure too.

ok whatevs got into this a bit more last night, and even found myself in a 'just one more go' mode.

I play better without the music, the combination of loud engines and loud music doesn't seem to work at all. I would have preferred in game commentary perhaps.

anyone played Fuel? i still need to pick it up from the post office, tonight.

played Fuel for about 15 mins this lunchtime, seems pretty damn decent. Much more satisfying driving than motorstorm.

I only finished one race and then it let me 'free roam' around the countryside, which was sweet.

More play tonight will see how it fares in the long run.

ok so despite the horrendously bad reviews for Fuel, I played the demo last night and it seemed kind of cool. Any further reports from people that actually have the full game?