MotorStorm

Pros:
+ An interesting thematic setting of Colorado's Monument Valley, embued by a festival aesthetic that cannot be better categorized than "Mad Max meets Burning Man"
+ While the soundtrack isn't specifically to my tastes, the hardcore, hard rock, and industrial tracks fit the setting extremely well, with big names such as Nirvana, QOTSA, Primal Scream and Curve as highlights
+ Graphical fidelity is very good for the year of release, with great animation, a solid framerate, and tasteful use of motion blur and camera flare effects. The team actually went out to Colorado and took thousands of pics and videos to recreate the area which is pretty cool
+ The ability to punch out other racers given you're both on a bike or ATV, or flick them off if they're in a car or truck was a really great touch
++ The single player campaign's progress is measured in tickets of single races with the only goal of winning, which is focused and promotes steady progress while reinforcing its arcade sensibilities
++ Track layout is consistently good across the board, with special attention paid to making sure no type of vehicle has any overwhelming advantage on a given track, given an equal skill level amongst drivers
++ Each track has effectively three tracks in one, with dedicated paths that prefer the bikes, big trucks, and mid-vehicles respectively, with chaotic choke points that bring everyone together.
++ The boost mechanic has a really good sense of speed and punishes overuse of it with longer cooldowns the more you use it, rewarding an extremely satisfying brake-boost-brake-boost gameplay loop that has you flying around the tracks as fast as possible.
++ Over-boosting actually explodes you in a forwards direction, which means it's actually tactically useful in a must-win-by-inches scenario. I've pulled it off a number of times and it's funny as fuck
++ Floaty but fair physics engine gives the suspension on stuff like the dune buggies and motorbikes a good sense of bounce and navigation over this rocky terrain without becoming overly sim-racer and hard as shit
++ Although the light vehicles are faster on neutral terrain, they can get absolutely fucking bodied by the big rigs which is a really cool cat-and-mouse dynamic to worry about. There are more than one events where you either play as one of many bikers racing a big rig or vice a versa where surviving is as difficult as maintaining a lead. It's cool that physicality amongst bigger racers is encouraged like that
+++ Despite a low overall track count, the campaign doesn't get stale because of events forcing you to drive a certain class of vehicle on a given track. The amount of permutations extends the challenge and really forces you to learn the ins and outs of every path on each track by the endgame
+++ Extremely fair difficulty curve even amongst tickets of the same "tier." I am pretty impatient and unskilled at racers outside of Mario Kart and even I was able to squeak out a large number of wins after some practice

Cons:
- The game features rubber-banding which can be an annoyance, but even though they can catch up it's quite rare any AI racers will overtake you and blow you out halfway through Lap 3 even on Level 4 tickets
- Extremely lengthy loading times, even for stuff as simple as picking a vehicle, kind of reveals a lack of total understanding of the PS3 hardware (which, in 2007, is fairly excusable IMO, but compare this to LBP1, for example)
- Despite having 5 models of each vehicle per class by the endgame, none of them have any differences amongst them outside of aesthetic differences, somewhat simplifying the depth of finding "your" vehicle of choice
- Soundtrack isn't nearly long enough (about 1:20:00 total) and you will be somewhat sick of the songs by the end of the game, which takes a little under 12 hours if you want to come in first every race
- Visual diversity amongst the tracks is pretty much non-existent, which can make long sessions feel sort of static. There are clear exceptions to this, though, notably the recurring free-for-all "Grizzly" track and the ridiculous and precarious "Rain God Mesa"
- Lack of splitscreen or local multiplayer, as well as the online servers getting shut down, means this is a strictly single-player game in 2018
- There are only 8 tracks in the entire game without DLC, which is useless to buy now since those tracks were online only. This is significantly mitigated by vehicle restrictions in the single player campaign mode as mentioned before, but still worth mentioning.

Year: 2007
Developer: Evolution
Publisher: SCE
Console Played: Playstation 3

One of the launch titles for the PS3, and one of the first games I owned which came with my console. Motorstorm is a neat little racer, and at the time it looked pretty lush too, showing off the fancy next gen graphics the console could offer. The details of all the mud and dirt flying about, the slow motion crashes and replays, the gorgeous locations. Unfortunately the gameplay didn't exactly have the same ambition. Whilst it is a fun and simplistic racer (think Burnout off road), it didn't really do anything we hadn't played before on our previous consoles. The single player is basically just darting from level to level, using different vehicles and trying to get the number one spot. The little details that step it up from your PS2 are that it had an online mode, you could use the sixaxis to turn your controller into a steering wheel, and the disc space allowed for huge levels with tonnes of multiple routes. Whilst it could be great fun at the time (mainly because we didn't have a lot of great launch titles on offer), the game has become incredibly redundant now that the PS3 has a proper library of games on offer. I challenge you to walk into a store that sells second hand games and not find a preowned copy of this game selling cheap. The whole basis of it's great sales was the whole "this will be great for now, whilst I wait for Gran Turismo 5" factor, and that alone does not make a classic game, but a throwaway one. The worst aspect of this game is that the online mode was practically broken, with ridiculous loading times and often very buggy, it didn't send off the best welcome for the PS3 online capabilities. This is a decent fun game with a kicking soundtrack, and a bit of character to it. I spent a lot of time on it when I first got my PS3, but even in 3 years this game has aged terribly. I couldn't recommend it to anyone now that there are so many superior games available on this console.

Motorstorm is an offroad racing game, that effectively tries to take the burnout formula and applie to a new setting. You have boost, you can takedown other vehicles, its incredibly arcadey and has great visuals. The gimmick about the game is that everysingle class type in the game compete in the same races, and as such you can have faster and nimble motorcycles racing against heavy and slow trucks. The tradeoff would be that motorcycles are much more prone to wrecking, but this obviously causes game issues which from the start means that online play doesnt work in it.

And neither does the campaign for the most part. The game is very frustrating to beat, though on it looks stunning visually and controls pretty well as well. Its main issue lies with the level design as well as the huge unbalanced between classes. This may mean that playing the truck class means that the races are close to unbeatable. The map design features a lot of death traps, and i do mean really a lot, which can be an issue due to the high speed the racing gets. At the same i do apreciate its openess and multiple pathways, as well as the big amount of players per race.

The game features butt rock soundtrack, as it tends to be usual with these sort of games.

Its a shame that this game is so flawed, because its usually that sort of niche racing experience that i crave for. I still had my fun playing throughout the campaign, but some of its issues are really infuriating and ultimatly compromise my recommendation of this title.