Motorstorm is great fun, and well worth a try. Don't believe Alex N.- he is a silly man with a strange head.
My first impression of motorstorm is that it looked amazing. It is truly a beautiful game. The way the mud deforms, dirt flies, and cars disintegrate is mesmerizing. The lighting is beautiful, and the sublime way time of day is captured enhances the general ambience. The art style is great, especially if you appreciate the Post-Apocalypse meets Outdoor rave aesthetic. The cars are awesome. I really love the fact there are cars from multiple continents and time periods represented. To often car games lose me because the focus on modern (bland) car designs. I can’t get enough of the “Patriot Charger”. Seeing it just makes me want to fly home immediately and tear down the highway in a 75 Ford GT. Motorstorm does have some frame-rate issues however. You won’t notice them at first when the AI is passive, but the frame-rate occasionally slows when there are multiple cars disintegrating simultaneously. It is not enough to ruin the driving experience, and is fairly rare. It seems to affect some tracks more than others. I am not sure if this is because some tracks are more processor intensive, or more inclined to have pile ups. These kind of frame-rate issues tended to occur in the early PS2 game, so I am sure they will be sorted out.
The music is fine, if you like that sort of thing. There is the option to deselect any songs that are totally giving you the s****.
It seems the most criticized aspect of Motorstorm is the lack of tracks. There are only 8 or so, but the fact that each is so long and complex helps to mitigate this limitation. You will find the driving experience of each varies with the vehicle class you are using. Driving the Grizzly as a Truck is like a totally different track to driving it as the rally car or bike. I have played the single player game for 20+ hours, and have not found it boring. This fact I partly put down to the steadily increasing difficulty of the “tickets”.
Progressing through the single player portion of Motorstorm involves collecting tickets. This means completing different races with different cars. As you win races and complete tickets you unlock more cars and more tickets. There are 21 tickets (with 1-4 races each), and they start off easyish and become diabolically. When I say hard, I mean HARD! To win the final 5 or so tickets means finishing races without crashing hardly at all. If you have played the game, you know this is not easy. You have to memorize the tracks and your favorite route, then execute them flawlessly. Add to this an AI that is so aggressive it makes Mr. T look like a pacifist, and you have a hard game. It is not impossible however. I am no gaming savant, and I managed to finish the game. I did have a few moments of pounding the controller against my skull before falling down and weeping in despair. Even though finishing the game receives no in game recognition (an austere move on the part of the developers), it was a proud and reliving moment for me. All to often finishing a game these days is almost expected. Motorstorm will make you doubt yourself, but if you rise zen like to the challenge, it is very rewarding. Who knows when “home” comes out maybe there will be a trophy. The multi-player is heaps of fun. People **** about the speed boost trick, but to them I say meh. It’s a level playing field. Use it or don’t. The most important thing is to not drive into walls or off cliffs. There is also the indescribable pleasure that comes from the first time you mow down your first dirt bike while driving a big rig. I like to imagine that scene in Terminator 2, except this time you get to end it by actually creaming the annoying kid on the bike. A note of caution about the multi-player: if you are a resident of Japan like me, make sure you buy a US copy from an import shop. The Japanese version has no online, and therefore no multiplayer at all.
I really enjoy Motorstorm, and think it was under-rated. It looks great, plays great, and is strangely addictive. The driving is simple, fun, and disarmingly entertaining. Get the demo, and if it leaves you wanting more, trust your instincts. I did, and have no regrets.