I really, really want to love this game. I really do. It's a massive improvement over the first in many ways, but one where it sadly does not is the shared "end-game plateau", as I like to call it. After about 3/4 of the way into the game, new tracks stop being introduced, and the rubberbanding AI becomes absolutely ludicrous. At many times, they are faster than you, and it's impossible to catch up. There is nothing to be gained here and everything lost, I have become actively drained playing both of these games and trying to finish them. It's such a shame too, as the first 3/4 of the game is actually wonderful and if the game was just that, it'd be in my top 10 racing games ever.

Xtreme sports gaming and the British fascination with motorsports—name a more iconic combo. Then rizz it up with Fyre Festival's acceptable cousin and you get this game, predating the Forza Horizon series and the paradigm it's established. While modern Forza trades on its easy open-world structure and room for customization, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift hails from a time when impressive audiovisuals and tight arcade-y campaigns were more than enough. Ex-Psygnosis staffers at Evolution Studios not only had a competitor in Bizarre Creations to keep them honest, but enough cachet with Sony at large to try something this extravagant. The original MotorStorm played a key role in selling the PS3 to wider audiences, so all its sequel had to do was iterate louder, longer, and harder more confident than ever. Challenge accepted, I guess. In the end, Evolution made something reaching well beyond expectations, for better or worse, with much more stuff and challenge to offer.

| Bodies and bikes beyond repair |

Pacific Rift knows what it wants and how to deliver it. We're no longer on the continent, sliding through muddy canyons or atop arid cliffs, but having a once-in-a-lifetime demolition derby across a suspiciously tidy tropical isle. Like every amalgam of Hawaii, Tahiti, and New Zealand ever featured in games, this resort island has it all: pristine beaches, fiery volcanoes, dense jungle, and treacherous peaks to race upon. Let's put aside the cavalier desecration of Earth's last refuges, all for the amusement of the bourgeosie, and accept that Evolution just wants players to perform awe-inspiring feats of racing and stunt-craft. It's still the '90s in these developers' teary eyes, and that means no end of leagues, minigames, and gleefully impolite road raging for hours on end. We get nothing less than the decline of Western civilization dressed up as pop punk, off-roaders wearing brand sponsorships, and air pollution thick enough to send the crowds into a fugue. As a hypothetical funeral ceremony for the xtreme sports age, it ticks many boxes.

For as much sheer exhilaration as Evolution's down-and-dirty racer gives me, there's plenty more frustration than I had hoped for. This mainly boils down to excessive rubber-banding—lightweight early on, but quite noticeable heading into the later stages and leagues. If you ever end up on a teeny lil' bike or have to race big rigs in an ATV, then godspeed! The AI loves to punt, shove, shunt, and wreck the player as much it can after the opening hour or so of racing, which makes driving anything but the tankiest vehicles a chore when having to restart. Rather than give more leeway via a qualifying lap to learn each course, or a way to reduce/disable rubber-banding entirely, Pacific Rift enforces its "our way or bust" progression and difficulty balance to a fault. Not a fan.

| The smell of oil and gas in the air |

Thankfully the game offers 16 race-tracks and many variations on the iconic MotorStorm ride types to keep things varied. I especially love how the buggies, bikes, and rally cars handle throughout each level, with different track surfaces having a tangible effect on each vehicle. Controls are weighty, almost simcade-like compared to the golden age of Burnout, but refined from the prequel and nary hard enough to use when navigating traffic. Part of this ease comes from the level designs themselves, with ample space to corner around opponents and room enough to go several racers wide in spots. Evolution balks at the claustrophobia of other racers, instead asking "what if all our courses were as expansive as battlefields?" And they made the right choice. Watching and participating in the sheer carnage that is high-level Pacific Rift racing, from Knievel-ish leaps of faith to hardcore brawls in the dirt and sand with neither contestant coming out on top.

Customization, though present via choosing multiple driver skins and liveries, never becomes the centerpiece it ought to. I'd have loved to tinker around with custom skins and other ways of tuning up vehicles beyond a few selectable adjustments. Had I been around for the game's online scene, this would have brought some much-needed longevity into the game loop. With no way to really make any ride your own or set up custom race series, Evolution must have figured their average player was already overwhelmed and needed a simpler structure to keep the chaos parse-able. I've got no better way to explain why, despite building off the original MotorStorm's framework, the sequel lacks that ambition in meaningful playtime which the Horizon games at least try to attain. Regardless, I'd bet this ended up more fun with humans than when going up against an AI mainly interested in forcing you to wipeout, let alone race competitively.

| And the glint of a solitary shaft of chromium steel |

What I can't ruthlessly criticize is the presentation in Pacific Rift. No amount of aging textures, lower-poly environments, or carefully hacked VFX can take away from how succulent these graphics are. It's a great combo of arcade realism and baffling technical wizardry, something the PS3 could have used more of. Water ripples and shines convincingly, the earth molds and deforms according to tectonic and artificial pressures, and particles leap up from all directions onto the screen in so much detail. At most, I'll concede that this game and its prequel are some of the more visually busy racers one can play, but never enough to make following the racing line and other drivers difficult or annoying. I really wish I had proper minimap, however!

Sony just couldn't deny itself the chance to add a record store's worth of its own labels' licensed music, either, following the tradition they started with Gran Turismo. I struggle to remember a lot of these tracks, even ones from bands like Queens of the Stone Age, but damn if the overall atmosphere isn't fitting. Part of this pleasant amnesia comes from the game's sound design, which outdoes the predecessor's raucous mix of engine roars, crunching metal, and sudden silence when watching yourself careen in slow motion. Combine all this with plenty of post-processing (visual and aural) and the whole thing becomes phantasmagoric, a whirlwind of athleticism and sensory overload that would make Mad Max proud.

Despite only making small improvements over the formula and falling into a bit of an irritating, repetitive slump partway through, I had a damn fun time with MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, just as I hoped. Without having yet played Drive Club, it's easy for me to grasp why people mourn the loss of Evolution Studios, Bizarre, Studio Liverpool, and other arcade racer studios of old. This series shows almost precisely how you can translate the goofy, unrealistic blockbuster delights of '90s racing classics into the HD+ era, what with MotorStorm: Apocalypse going all in on surviving one set-piece after another. Here, though, the action's more organic, shaped by capricious crowds swerving and overtaking against each other to dodge peril and take the podium. It's tempting to compare this to kart racers, so I'll compromise and deem this more of a modern take on what SEGA's Power Drift evoked back in the '80s: a semblance of real motorsports corrupted by ballooning budgets, loud personalities, and proudly throwing caution to the wind. The eternal weekend of motor mayhem lives on.

Mad Max adrenaline by way of tropical jet fuel. Scorched engines and ocean-washed monsters of steel hurling their fragile husk across the sand of the Island in search of this historical death on the Pacific Rift.

Motorstorm at its absolute peak, the tracks act as biomes who themselves serve the riders as much as they threaten to derail them at any moment - few games have had as genius of an idea as the dual nature of the cooling mechanic; bodies of water slowly refresh your turbo charge whilst fire-engulfed parcels cause your whole hood to light-up, preventing you from going completely gun-ho in some of the tighter bends and treacherous shortcuts of the tracks. What goes around comes around - the Island will claim its tributes in the grand festival of life, no matter what. AI deficiencies and a lack of variety in the modes of racing prevent this one from a claim to all-timer status but this remains one of the most impressive games about cars in motions of the last fifteen, twenty years. Sublime kinesthesia - all cracking to the brim with PS360 visual exhaust and grain - complemented by astute camera work that blends utility and cinematography to produce some truly gripping angles, making you flow from tail to rear in an instant and back again without sacrificing control over your vehicle - there's never an unsalvageable turn here, never will you not be one with the environment all the way to the point of (literal) combustion on the finishing line. They simply do not make 'em like this anymore.

This is racing for the movers and shakers, not breakdancers, those who party knee-deep in the morning mud and drink full from the source to cure their caldera blues.

I've wasted years of my life playing this game, it may aswell be one of my all time favorites, but something just makes me like Monument Valley more and I've always felt weird for it... Until I sat down and thought to myself. Thing is, Pacific Rift lacks what made MotorStorm what it is for me. The stampede, the rawness, wrestling in the mud and screaming to God that you're alive. It's not a sumo wrestling pack racer anymore but a lunatic running naked through the fields.

It may lack in raw force, but that's not to say it's any bad. Pacific Rift brings speed, adrenaline and pure freedom, it's the very opposite of MV. It's precise and knows what it wants, there is much more thought put into the tracks, the presentation, the menus, music, etc. Everything is organized neatly for your pleasure, and the pleasure comes from the competition.

The added depth into boosting coupled with the sheer speed PR has, gives you a rush of adrenaline only Rain God Mesa could ever have, you're always kept on your toes and the environment only pushes you off them. Your opponents' engines scream as they hurl their trucks at you with reckless abandon, and watching them tumble into a boulder as they miss makes me grin like a maniac.
You can't get cocky here though, take one wrong turn and your vehicle will crawl for its life. It wants you to learn the tracks much more than MV, yet the routes seem less spread out. It forces you to be careful.

The big advantage Pacific Rift has over its predecessor is the replayability. Coupled with almost every car and driver from the previous game, it makes sure you have plenty of new content to try out aswell and at your own pace too. The festival campaign is set up nicely with every zone being divided into it's own, and to keep things fresh, you have much more than just vanilla racing.

Once you figure out the AI and the tracks, they're really not much of an issue. There are tons of intentional and unintentional shortcuts for the player to take. At that point, things come down to your own reflexes and skills, they will be tested here and only the strong make it through. The AI system is the opposite of MV, it starts difficult and gets easier with each lap. At the very end, this becomes a problem because the hardcore AIs can begin so fast that by the time they're forced to slow down, they'll already be crossing the finish line. If they're not sacrificing themselves just to get you, that is.

The visuals at a stand still are very pretty and improved compared to before, the flowing rivers and volcanoes really help sell it all. It still holds up, even if it doesn't look as good as MV at speed.

The online is a strong point but it's a step down from MV which had tons of options like extra gamemodes, mirrored tracks and catch-up. Instead it has tons of badges to collect and keeps the ranking system, along with trophies. Nothing beats chasing and crushing your victims with a dump truck as you cast your shadow over them, making a convoy to block ramps with jet engined big rigs, ram-boosting your friend off a cliff and sending everyone in the field flying with one loud blast. Heavyweight fights in this game are damn fun. You can connect to the servers via PSRewired.

But the compliments end here, PR has tons of technical issues. Be warned that updating your game and installing DLCs will turn your save into a ticking timebomb, and when it explodes, your game becomes unplayable. They were programmed improperly and force the game to write over memory it shouldn't touch. Your game may crash on boot, when you try to do a festival race, when you enter the garage or something really specific like a wreckreation race where you've changed the opponent vehicles. Time attack is the most sensitive to this, which sucks because there are almost 200 times to beat for a new ride.
If you're on real hardware it's a pain in the ass, but on an emulator you can just backup your save and replace it whenever your game bricks. Thankfully, all time attack saves are stored seperately and aren't affected.

I hope you have a great vacation at the Pacific!

Wyraźna poprawa od poprzedniej części pod wieloma względami, w końcu czuć, że to pełnoprawna gra, a nie tech-demo z jeżdżeniem 20 razy po tej samej trasie, jednak najgorsze, czyli duży rubberbanding i skoczna, losowa fizyka, dwa najbardziej frustrujące mnie elementy tutaj pozostały. Tras jest 2x więcej niż w oryginale, ale w rzeczywistości wydaje się jakby różnica była jeszcze większa, bo są tu cztery środowiska w przeciwieństwie do jednego (z grubsza: woda, ogień, ziemia, powietrze. Jak w Kapitanie Planecie. ;) ) i prócz tego mamy więcej rodzajów zawodów niż tylko zwykły wyścig (dodano jeszcze time triale i eliminator gdzie co punkt kontrolny odpada ostatni zawodnik). Najfajniejszym dodanym featurem w Pacific Rift jest to jak środowisko wpływa na przegrzewanie się nam dopalacza, czyli jak jesteśmy spryskiwani wodą, to możemy używać nitro dużo dłużej bez problemu, bo samochód nam się chłodzi, a gdy przykładowo skaczemy nad lawą to ryzyko wybuchu jest większe, bo nitro przegrzewa się ~3 razy szybciej. Dodaje to trochę więcej wagi temu jaki skrót wybierzemy, z której strony weźmiemy zakręt itd (co niestety i tak niszczy wspomniany durny rubberbanding). Pojazdów i ich typów również jest więcej, nadal nie podoba mi się w tej serii jednak, że wszyscy mogą się ścigać na raz, co sprawia, że wszystkie jadą mniej więcej jednym tempem, jedynie niektórzy zmieszczą się w mniejszą szczelinę, a inni rozwalą większość przeszkód bez zatrzymania, jednak wiadomo, że jeśli ktoś za bardzo oddali się od grupy to nad wszystkim czuwa wszechmocny rubberbanding... Już trzeci raz go wspominam, no ale psuje mi on niemal każdy element tej samochodówki. Raz nawet gra się zapomniała i zamiast ukryć to poza kamerą to gdy wygrywałem teleportowała 3 przeciwników tuż przed moim nosem. :D No sprawiedliwa rywalizacja, nie ma co!

Plusy i minusy:
+ fajny nowy system przegrzewania / schładzania nitro
+ więcej tras, bardziej różnorodne
+ o niebo lepszy soundtrack, dużo więcej piosenek i w większości bardziej w moim guście (nadal rock/metal + house i inna szeroko pojęta elektronika, no ale jakoś tym razem trafiło)
- oszukany poziom trudności, to na którym miejscu dojedziemy na metę często zależy bardziej od szczęścia niż umiejętności. Początkowo chciałem zaliczyć każdy możliwy event na pierwszym miejscu, ale po 3h walenia głową w ścianę w jednym wyścigu stwierdziłem, że brązowy medal musi mi wystarczyć. I dobrze, bo multi już nie działa, a są za nie trofea, więc platyny i tak nie da się wbić.
- frustrująca fizyka, czasami wystarczy zahaczyć o kamyczek wielkości klocka Lego i już mamy pełną animację zgniatania się auta (całkiem ładna swoją drogą, no ale uruchamiana często i z byle powodu wkurza)
- szkoda, że nie ma choć jednej czy dwóch tras przeniesionych ze starego Motorstorma, brakowało mi trochę takiej piaszczystej pustyni.