Review: MotorStorm: Arctic Edge

One of the launch titles for the PS3, MotorStorm gained fans by having great graphics, some very well designed courses, a dramatic and violent destruction system and probably most importantly, the lack of many other games to buy for the brand new expensive system. As it happened, it was really good fun to play, spawning a recent sequel and now this PSP iteration, setting the game in a vastly different location, the titular Arctic Edge.

MotorStorm has always relied on the combination of dramatic vast landscapes, massive jumps and a great physics engine which lends itself well to the whole slow motion destruction when you crash or are merely rammed by a bigger vehicle. These things aren’t the first thing that you would expect from a portable title, but despite not having the polish of the PS3 games, it does seem to be pushing the PSP to the limit, working admirably and beautifully given the system’s capabilities. In fact, the frame rate is solid throughout, even when an enormous jump gives you a view of a large portion of the track to come, although the areas are designed with this limitation in mind very well.

The MotorStorm Festival

Set up as a racing festival, MotorStorm gives you a series of events over 12 courses, and demands you earn a set number of points to reach the next rank, and therefore unlock the slightly more challenging races. In each race (going either forwards or backwards around the areas) you will have the option of a number of different vehicle types and versions of said vehicles within that group. Each handles differently and has advantages over the others. The massive big rigs and snow ploughs are slower, but much tougher, allowing you to literally smash up your opposition, losing them valuable seconds while they wait to respawn. The smaller vehicles are generally quicker with better handling, but make a mistake and you’ll crash dramatically and probably end up losing your place.

To account for different courses being advantageous to different vehicles, there are a ridiculous amount of different paths to take through each track, generally following the rule of ‘the lighter your vehicle, the higher the path you should be taking’. Since the bigger vehicles can just roll through the thick snow and mud that tends to accumulate on the lower areas, and the smaller vehicles can navigate better over the thinner routes, it becomes a simple case of picking the right route, which thankfully is normally very apparent, though the easier early races will be invaluable to you in learning the courses for your own favourite route in each vehicle.

Snow is a feature

More than just a visual effect to put spots of snow on your HUD, snow plays a rather important part in MotorStorm: Arctic Edge. After a 10 second charge period at the start of a race, all vehicles can use their boost, which does exactly what you’d expect from the feature. The difference in MotorStorm is that it lasts for as long as you hold down the boost button, recharging quickly when not being used, essentially down to the heat of your vehicle. If you use it too much, and ignore the warning flames and alert sounds then you will explode, and require a few seconds of down time to respawn and resume, however if you’re driving through deep snow, it will act to cool your vehicle down, and allow you to use more boost, so knowing the courses for their deep snow sections becomes a skill that you’ll pick up the more you play.

Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult to tell where these areas are in comparison to other snow on the track though the mud is an obvious difference, and a welcome bit of variation to a white snowfield. Snow isn’t just limited to helping you. Ice bridges can be destroyed if too heavy vehicles attempt to drive over them, and equally, avalanches can occur wiping out racers in the wrong place at the wrong time. It all adds up to a set of environments that seem a lot more interactive than just places to drive around.

The downside of the PSP

Fortunately, the controls lend themselves very well to the single analogue ‘nub’ of the PSP, with acceleration controls on the shoulder buttons and boost tied to the X. The multiplayer capability is smooth and seamless over the internet, though I couldn’t find anyone locally to test Ad Hoc, it will invariably not be any slower than online through WiFi.

As with most PSP games, listening to the audio through headphones is the clear choice for audio fidelity, and while the sound effects are admirable, they audio is really pumped up by some excellent choices for the soundtrack. ‘The Prodigy – Omen’ headlines the list, and always makes me perform better in a race. I was also impressed to see ‘The Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy Hey Girl’ and ‘Queens of the Stone Age – Go With The Flow’.

A little more to it...

Rather than just simple races, there are a few different types of event to enjoy when they occur during the pretty lengthy festival. There’s a solo checkpoint style speed races where you must make it through multiple laps of a course without the time running out, gaining an extra five seconds per checkpoint, and a points based race where your ‘score’ is constantly incrementing dependant on the position you are currently holding, and the first racer to 999 points is the winner.

There is also a well designed photo mode which can be accessed at any point (while not playing multiplayer) which lets you move the camera around and snap a picture of your current position, giving yourself the opportunity for photographic masterpieces of PSP quality. An extra little treat, there are hidden emblems around the courses which if you manage to grab a snapshot of, will unlock medals; essentially trophies/achievements for the game. These aren’t limited to emblems however, and your standard accomplishments are noted with a decent number of things to try and fulfil which will undoubtedly extend the life of the game for many.

Overall, MotorStorm feels like an appropriate entry in the series, and a remarkable feat given the technology. Sure, the crashes aren’t quite as spectacular due to the physics modelling being slightly inaccurate somewhere along the pipeline, and the lack of (or limited) rubber banding in the enemy AI means that sometimes an early mistake will make a race impossible to win, but the game is a perfect racer on the go, especially for fans of the series.