Review: Motorstorm: Apocalypse

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 07 April 2011 14:28

Entertainment

Taking the mad-cap lunatic racing to the streets, this time the Motorstorm: Apocolypse has come to town.

Sensitive to current real-world events; the devastation in Christchurch, throughout Japan and elsewhere across the world, Sony Computer Entertainment has delayed further shipping of Motorstorm: Apocalypse.  And when you know the games setting, this was an understandable and admirable decision.  

Mororstorm: Apocolypse
	Developer	Evolution Studios
	Publisher	Sony
	Rating	M
PS3

Motorstorm: Apocalypse however, is most obviously a fantastical game with no real-world ties to spark any guilt trips during play.  The game is based on the stupidly anarchic premise of a group of Mad Max stylized bro & babe racers taking part in Motorstorm, a hell-bent violent race-at-all-costs competition across improvised tracks in an ever changing environment.

Previous Motorstorm titles focussed simply on the racing, players could pick just about any vehicle from a dirt bike to a big rig and then get racing across deformable terrain, leaving tire trails in the mud, finding your own way through the chaos of both fellow racer and changing race conditions, managing heat and boost to get across the finish line at the pointy end.

In Apocalypse, Evolution Studios has moved the action to a more urban environment, one that is teaming with activity.  This is the Apocalypse after all, and as such there is a lot going on.  One of the best 'tracks' in this latest iteration of Motorstorm features the racers making their way across the crumbling skyline of a city as high rise buildings collapse, debris fly, fires break out, helicopters take to the air, glass shatters, smoke billows, rain falls and through the midst of all this, crazy inhabitants throw Molotov cocktails at your vehicle.

There is a lot from Split Second: Velocity in the highly destructive and chaotic environments, except the racing is not as linear.  There are multiple paths around the track, and more than likely, via some gigantic pipe crashing down, or office block destruction, second time around that path will be different.   

Design wise, whilst the chaos is fun, after a short period the level of destruction weighs heavily on the urge to simply race.  The effect is a less intense racing experience, replaced instead with survival instinct. 

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