MotorStorm Artic Edge
After spending some time with Arctic Edge I’m finding it hard to feel anything but love for it. Motorstorm for me has always been about the online experience with the campaign being a way to learn the ropes for half an hour before you launch into its maniac online races.
So in a world where I can’t use Wi-Fi on public transport the question remains what can I get out of this mostly single player MotorStorm experience? The answer is loads but only because the game is very well suited to the PSP’s portable gaming goodness.
The concessions made bringing Motorstorm to PSP and PS2 are substantial but Bigbig do a great job of bringing that key gaming experience we know and love in to a focused and fun portable rendition. So what are these concessions? Well visually AR looks like it could have been one of the PSP launch titles, vehicles are blocky and the the damage they take is pretty minimal and unconvincing. The tracks themselves certainly don’t feel as alive as its PS3 counterpart usually looking very empty once you break away from the pack. The production values are certainly top notch it’s a pity the in game stuff doesn’t quiet match up. This is not to say that it’s an ugly game! It’s the opposite, in fact in game looks fine but just not AAA in my opinion.
Where the game really shines is in the races themselves. Fast short and fun affairs are perfect in bursts, vehicles handle beautifully and thanks to the great controls you never feel like the game or hardware are working against you (see Wipeout pure). Controls are something of an oddity, the R1 trigger accelerates while L1 breaks – Motorstorms patented boost feature is X and analogue steers. It’s a great system that works very well on the system. So well in fact that going back to playing other PSP racers feels like hand cramp city! My only problem with it was because I have played a lot of Wipeout on PSP, muscle memory dictated that shoulder buttons are air breaks so I had to meditate on that for awhile before bringing myself to a spiritual plane that didn’t make me crash every time I wanted to turn left.
Even though the tracks don’t look the best they are still designed with multiple routes and short cuts and are as big as some of its console counter parts. One thing I will say is that the game is extremely easy. I had a massive amount of races under my belt in one weekend with out coming in under 2nd. Looking past that though the game is very fun and like I say, perfect for a portable arcade racing experience.
Ok so let’s finish up with features, there’s eight vehicle classes unique to Artic Edge including snow type vehicles like Snow Plow and the very cool Snow plugger. Along with these comes 12 new tracks the best of which being Cold Rush, reason being if you beep your horn at the right time it will cause and avalanche that will bury any one in its path. Its very cool but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try in in a Multiplayer match.
So there you have it, to answer the question from earlier on: Yes there is still a lot of fun to be had offline with Motorstorm:AE. If you’re a fan of MotorStorm and you have a PSP there really isn’t anything else on the platform that’s going to cater for your sick arcade needs. Disappointed in Gran Turismo PSP? This is the remedy. It may not have the chiseled looks but its pure arcade and better for it.
looks good. possibly better then gran turismo which i didnt expect
Great game for the old Luas, the races are just long enough to play on a trip to ballaly, forgot to mention you can do some slight vehicle customization also. Its a good value portable game.
I like the change of scenary though I would have liked if the original motorstorm could have had different climates as downloadable tracks. that was my only critcism of the original, everything was dusty, they made a change with Pacific Rift but again not enough, old school racing games used to take you round the world for all climates; forest, snow, desert, city etc
Had a chance to play a bit and yeah, it's great fun. More then GT is… but it does look god awful. It's something you can overlook when you have iPhone games that often look horrendous, but they could have done something interesting with graphics rather then just scaled down the big brother.
Cell shading would have worked nicely…