2 posts tagged “sony”

I spent a sizable portion of my evening playing and enjoying Motorstorm on the PS3 and have come to a few observations and one startling realisation.

Whilst thrashing around the lovely, albeit limited, number of tracks in Motorstorm I was reminded of a corking game I used to play on my Atari STe. The game was an arcade conversion called Super Off Road which saw you race tiny trucks around a track displayed on screen. The cars were mini but to me and my friends huddled around with joysticks and keyboard they felt like they were reacting to the terrain. It felt like they had rudimentary simulations of grip and that there was a skill to playing the game and winning. I recall being quite good in the end and it's one of the first games I completed. Eighteen years later - yes it really is 18 years, and I get that same fun from racing round a small number of tracks churning up dirt and using nitro boosts on a current home console. Motorstorm is essentally the same game but with more vehicles, a slightly different mechanism for boosts. Some could say it's found lacking in that back in 1989 Ivan the Ironman clearly knew that it was all about "pimp"-ing your ride and so vehicle upgrades for better grip and speed off the line were available.

I am not here to defend the PS3. It's late to market, the games lack polish and many features that I've come to expect from the 360, for example I have to repeatedly tell Motorstorm to load in English rather than it figure that out from the system and the world of online gaming still eludes me, but a consistent thread of fun, usually on four wheels, runs through all my Playstation experiences over the years but this seems to  tap into something quite powerful which although it's an old concept is still really good. It may not be deep but it is fun and as I start to get the hang of it I am remembering that same feeling of enjoyment I got from hanging out with friends and thrashing round tiny well known courses, knowing how to time turns and make it over the water splash to get to the extra nitro before my opponent :)

It also got me thinking about what a shame it is that a lot of PS3 owners to be will probably not pick this up. 1up's podcast talks a lot about games being "sent to die" either because they serve only to boost another's sales or because they are released so early on in a console's life span. Motorstorm could be a victim of the latter which is sad because it deserves to be seen by a wider audience and not just in videos. I'm not suggesting it's great value for money or even something I'll still be playing in 6 months but what it does do is show off brilliantly. It's insanely fast, very pretty and the tracks although few in number are richly decorated and have clearly been lovingly put together. A tender hand has hidden short cuts and scenery for you to discover and charge through and it's for the souls that devoted many hours to a game and have to watch the terrible press surrounding this machine that I raise a toast. It's not a big or clever title but deeper games have failed to awaken joyous childhood memories of speed and innocent indulgence and I think any form of media that can do that is worthy of praise.