Motorstorm: Pacific Rift

I got a play.com credit card earlier in the year as purchases and balance transfers were at a 0% rate until April 2010 or there abouts. Of course, there is the small balance transfer fee of around 3% (how else do credit card companies make money from this?) but hey, it pays off for itself – every pound I spend at play.com I get two points. Every pound I spend everwhere else I get one point. 500 points = £5 voucher.

With this in mind, I paid the balance of our new sofa with my card. This in turn gave me £10 to spend at play.com. There is a good reason why I never bought Motorstorm: Pacific Rift when it first came out: I was still playing the first one, and one was looking after the pennies before moving house. I have now finished with the first Motorstorm and you can pick the second one up now for £9.99 (as it is now Platinum).

So, I recieved Motorstorm: Pacific Rift for the price of paying the balance of my new 3 piece suite on my play.com credit card and into the playstation it went. After (finally) getting to the main screen, it was easy to jump straight into the action. You have four areas to play around in: Earth, Air, Fire and Wind (weren’t they an 80′s rock group?). Earth races consist of lush, green, sometimes hilly courses, while Fire will have you racing dangerously over volcanoes and next to lava pits. Nice.

Changing your vehicle and vehicle livery is a lot better – the first Motorstorm had the user waiting about 5 minutes to change the livery of his / her vehicle, before deciding that the new livery isn’t a very nice one, and then waiting another 5 mintues to change to another one. you can even change your driver and what he / she is wearing. Small, but a nice add on all the same.

Into the race, the same rules apply – get to first place, try not to crash and don’t boost for too long or you’ll go ‘boom’. The graphics are again extremely detailed, and as far as I can see there is no slow down. The races are exciting, if frustrating at times. When you are new to the game, you may find it hard in some places to determine where the track is going. It is only until you end up flying over the edge (hidden by some trees and hedges) of a cliff when you realise that the track was bearing left, and not straight ahead as you initially thought. The routes are not as clear as you would hope them to be, even after you have played the tracks over a few times.

With a couple of new modes thrown in (Speed and Knockout) and some “challenges” (Crash and Time limit), as well as the traditional “Online” mode, you’ll have hours of fun with this. Yes, you’ll crash a thousand times and sometimes it won’t be your fault, but that’s Motorstorm – in fact, that’s racing. At least you get a chance to race again and again – Ayrton Senna didn’t, rest his soul.

If you want a racing game that has got speed, excitement, jumps, bumps, waterfalls and all things off-road, give this a go. If you haven’t got the first Motorstorm, don’t bother – this one is better.

Oh, and I’m still paying the sofa off, and as of yet I have not been charged any interest.