Motorstorm is developed by Evolution Studios, who are responsible for the WRC series. The team really peaked at WRC Evolution, and the reason that game was so fun was because the physics were spot-on, the damage modelling was brilliant, and the game was a lot of fun. Happily, we're pleased to report that Motorstorm nails all three of these things. When we had a chance to play it we quickly chose a vehicle (motorbikes weren't available unfortunately) and the game automatically selected the one track that we've seen in just about every image of the game released thus far.
Too close for comfort...
When you first start off with Motorstorm, the vehicles feel a little bit slippery, like they're sliding off the edges of the nearest cliff; even the surface of the road feels a little bit too slide-happy. However, after about ten minutes you adjust to the handling and you'll be sliding around corners like a pro. You're encouraged to try and "take out" your enemies, so you can actually block cars off so they slam into a wall - in doing so, you'll see the vehicle next to you reduced to rubble. This means that this can be done to you however, so you'll need to be careful. If you do crash, then your car is likely to incur some huge impressive damage effects. To accentuate these, in some of the more dangerous crashes, the game even slows down so you can see your vehicle being entirely deformed.
Motorstorm is a great demonstration of just how much the PlayStation 3 is capable of, with just about everything in game depicted in real time graphics. The tracks will deform in real time, you'll see obstacles blocking your course, and no race will ever be the same. In our time with the game, we never had the same race, or even the same lap. The audio in game will also be manipulated in real time, although on the version we played the audio wasn't fully refined just yet.
The destruction really is this realistic.
After playing the game, it's really hard not to get excited about Motorstorm. Despite the fact that the build we played looked like it was relatively old, everything seemed so incredibly smooth; we never encountered any slowdown. Light still hasn't really been shed on how many modes Motorstorm will offer, but online play is a certainty. The game is also still quite a few months from completion, so there is time to implement more tracks, and hopefully more vehicles.
Motorstorm isn't yet up to the calibre of "that" trailer, but it's still a phenomenal game that's a bucketload of fun. It's not unusual for preview code to have bugs and glitches, but Motorstorm ran so well that you'd swear it was near completion. Motorstorm is something to be very excited about.
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