Motorstorm was a solid, if incomplete launch game. It was pretty much my favourite launch game, with Resistance coming a very close second. Although I loved the online matches in Resistance the game itself just wasn’t fun enough. Motorstorm on the other hand was balls-out awesome. I played it for countless hours over my other games for about 4 months then the second wave of ps3 games emerged. I still pop it in now and again for a quick blast but with my increasingly large cache of PS3 games (21 disc games at last count) these precious moments for me and my beloved are a rare thing. A few weeks ago I heard about the team behind Motorstorm were coding the sequel: pacific rift. This news was exciting as it would be more Motorstorm but with the many flaws fixed.
Anyways today I received the usual PlayStation Network newsletter which I generally browse through then delete, as it is usually rubbish. This issue however came with a code to download the demo for Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. I rushed into my room and downloaded it right away and have been happily playing away at it for an hour or so.



My first impression was that the interface has been significantly redesigned, or should I say designed. The first game was just a looping movie with the main options written on the top, nothing particularly interesting but the demo has managed to improve on this. It has a very modern graffit/urban look to it and even the vehicle select screen is in a similar vein. This is a much needed improvement as the vehicle select screen before was a rendering of the bike/car/van on top of a large rock...thing which took an unacceptable amount of time to load and even stuttered at points, hopefully this new design will address that issue.



The racing part of the game is as solid as it ever has been with the lovely addition of rumble for those of you who have DualShock 3 controllers. The vibration, as is the case with most of the rumble enabled PS3 games is never too harsh. It is enough to let you know you’ve hit something but never painful in your hand like the 360 controller is. The controls on the whole are basically the same as the originals with the addition of bunny hops and other little trick combos for the bikes. The vehicles always seem to respond well to my input which really helps the feeling your going faster than man should ever travel, which is damn exhilarating. The camera does the usual 'pan out when going fast' routine, which is done in a subtle manner so it actually does give an impression of going really fast.



There seems to be a lot of good fixes in this title over the old game. The biggest fix, one the community at large wanted, is the inclusion of split screen racing. I rarely if ever use split screen in my games, opting more for the LAN connection of consoles when my mates are round so I haven’t had chance to put this mode through it’s paces but if the rest of the demo is anything to go by it should be fairly solid.

Once again the Evolutions Studios team have delievered a demo for a game which is just amazing fun, something that modern games seem to forget is necessary. I for one will definitely pick this bad boy up when it is released on October 28th.

On a side note I did not get access to this early demo of the game through subscription to Qore or by reseving the game at Gamestop, this was just through my email newsletter. If you are thinking of plunking down some cold hard cash for a chance of playing this demo early and you normally recieve the PSN newsletter by email I suggest you wait a day or two cause you may be able to save your self some money.