Motorstorm: Apocalypse

Rating: T

Score: 8.5/10

Once upon a time, there was a game called Excitebike back in the 1990s. It was a fun, simple game where you had infinite nitrous oxide, but your engine needed to cool down between uses. Excitebike 64 (on Nintendo 64) and Excite Truck (on the Nintendo Wii) expanded the theme, making it a fast-paced racing series. At the same time as Excite Truck was released, Motorstorm hit shelves offering a similar style (but, being on Playstation 3, it looked nicer). After two games in the Motorstorm series, we got Apocalypse. Two games is hard to hold the game series on one console, can it go for third? This game is a Playstation 3 exclusive.

So, what kind of story could be made for racing around an apocalyptic world? You're a racer, and you decide to participate in a tournament that has everyone racing around a dying city. Why? Because it's much more dangerous than normal racing. You not only have the constant fear of crashing but also collapsing buildings.

Like Excitebike, your engine can only boost for so long, then it overheats. Running through water or just not using boost will let it gradually cool down. Having boost is great for quick passes, ramming opponents, or keeping tight in corners. Since it is so useful, it's nice the boost is unlimited.

The racing and maps are the bread and butter of the whole game. The racing is smooth and fast-paced, just as it should be. It almost has the air of an intense race scene from an action movie. Having Arnold Schwarzenegger shoot off bad one-liners might make the game a perfect shoe-in for...any Arnold Schwarzenegger film!

The maps are well-designed, which is a shame because they all fall to pieces. Each time a piece of the world falls, it causes an obstacle and/or creates a shortcut. Using the chaos of falling cities and the chaos of the constantly-boosting racers makes for just a mess on the "track". That's why it's so amazing.

There're tons of different classes of vehicles-from cars to monster trucks to bikes to rally cars. Bigger vehicles tend to handle more damage, but will be hard on turns. Light vehicles just glide around turns, but also off road from the slightest touch from a larger car.

The game has some great online play, as to be expected. 15 other racers rev their engines around a collapsing track and mercilessly beat each other around. It's like what I believe most post-apocalyptic races would be like in real-life, only the meanest and coldest people survive, and the purpose of the new life is to dominate the others. True anarchy at its best (worst?).

It's probably the best arcade racing game on the Playstation 3, but not overall the best. It's still a very simple game, even though it looks very nice and works great. It's not a huge improvement over the others in its series, but it's clearly better, fuller game. This game races to victory but doesn't quite take the first trophy outside its class.