MotorStorm Arctic Edge
Powdery perfection?
The original MotorStorm was something of a poster child for Sony's PS3 when it first launched. With its impressive high def visuals, wide open tracks, masses of different vehicles and persistent track deformation (a feature that never quite lived up to its hype) it screamed Next Gen at the top of its voice to anyone who'd listen. A couple of years and a slightly lacklustre sequel later the brand is now making the sideways move onto the PSP with the new MotorStorm Arctic Edge. How will it fair without the processing oomph of the PS3 to fall back on? Let's find out.
With development of Arctic Edge farmed out to Bigbig Studios, they of Pursuit Force fame, this still manages to be every inch MotorStorm. Sticking (or should that be frozen?) to the tried and tested formula this is an arcade racer where a whole host of different vehicles compete against each other on the same track. While the series' PS3 incarnations have been set in deserts and jungles its PSP debut sees it move to the far cooler climes of an Alaskan mountain, giving you the plentiful snow implied in the title.
There are a total of twelve tracks in all to race around although each of these is also available to play in reverse. In a nice twist all tracks appear to have been hewn from the same mountain with your progress through the game mirrored by your progress towards the mountain's snowy peak. The tracks are all typical MotorStorm affairs full of big sweeping height changes, multiple paths and stomach tightening jumps. Those looking for that little extra edge in a race can trigger avalanches with a quick blast of your horn and if judged correctly these can prove catastrophic for your fellow racers. There are also collapsing bridges scattered around to add another facet to the gameplay although these are perhaps more of an annoyance than anything else.
As you'd expect from the setting and the name you'll come across more than your fair share of snow and ice while racing. With this in mind it's pleasing that unlike other racing games whose token snow stages often serve as little more than slippery slidy irritants the handling in Arctic Edge always feels on the right side of the playable-versus-realistic scale; never do you wish for a rapid springtime thaw. In fact the copious amounts of white powder actually come in handy as you can use any big drifts you find to speed up the cool down of your much needed turbo boost.
As ever your choice of vehicle will affect how each race pans out and there's an impressive twenty four to choose from here. While things like bikes, ATV's, rally cars and big rigs may be old hat to MotorStorm veterans there's also a couple of snow specific rides in there to add a slice of variety. First up we have the small yet nippy snow machine (a snowmobile to you and I) with the hulking super powerful snow plough completing the set. Whatever you choose, and you'll want to give them all a bash, they handle as you'd expect and the controls in general haven't suffered a jot from the move to the PSP's less than ideal analogue nub.
There's a degree of customisation too with the ability to edit the look of your car if you like that kind of thing. Spoilers, exhausts and lights can all be messed with while new paint schemes and advertising badges can be applied at will. While it's a shame there's no options to adjust the performance of your ride it can still be fun to spend some time tinkering with the look of your vehicle. If you manage to create something truly great or simply do something cool during a race that you want to share there's a handy photo mode that lets to take snaps and send them to friends to show off. There's also a healthy dose of multiplayer too with true online racing possible between up to eight players.
It'd be unfair to compare any PSP game to its PS3 relations but MotorStorm does as good a job as you'd expect of retaining the look and feel fans have come to expect. The obvious concession is the fact that the number of participants in each race has been cut to a slightly disappointing eight but the AI is competitive enough after the first few races that there's always enough of them around you to keep things feeling busy. The tracks all look good and move at a perfectly acceptable speed, there's sometimes an issue seeing quite where you need to go the first time around a track with the general white on light grey colour scheme the tracks settings naturally encourage but it's not really an issue once you've been round a track once or twice.
Somehow, despite capturing the anarchic racing action of its PS3 sibling pretty well there's still something about Arctic Rift that feels a little underwhelming. Perhaps it's the fact that without the PS3's high def visuals its lost a little of its identity amongst what's a well populated PSP arcade racing genre. Or perhaps its simply that it's ultimately more of the same. Either way while there's nothing at all wrong with MotorStorm Arctic Edge there's also very little to help it stand out from the PSP crowd. Existing fans who love the idea of a portable MotorStorm will relish it, PSP gamers simply looking for the system's best racer may want to think a little harder.
78%
Comments
Quote "A couple of years and a slightly lacklustre sequel later"
Pacific Rift is an awesome game. Never played the first one, but PR is anything but lacklustre.
Quote "A couple of years and a slightly lacklustre sequel later"
Thats a funny quote, PR is a better game than the first!!!
We gave Pacific Rift 80%, although that was nearly a year ago by a different reviewer:
http://play.tm/review/21932/motorstorm-pacific-rift/
And the original 89% over 2.5yrs ago...
http://play.tm/review/10262/motorstorm/
Cool, that doesnt make PR worse the the original. All i need to do is say one thing. MULTIPLAYER, and you will realise it is better than the original, JAson.
Oh yes. The petty bickering over a few review score percentage points begins.
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