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!

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!