Motorstorm 2
Bringing it to what it should be
Motorstorm was supposed to be a PS3 system seller. Instead Sony found itself giving it away in a bundle pack. I purchased Motorstorm when I bought my PS3 last year. I envisioned it being the next generation of the old game 1nsane which I used to love to play on PC quite a few years ago. The graphics looked great, the handling looked fun, and the physics looked insane. After playing the game all those thing proved to be true but there was something huge missing. Something so large that it killed the game for me and I haven't played it in months now. I'm talking about a coherent single player experience and a multiplayer portion that makes the player want to keep playing. Here's what I would do...
The game starts off with the player chosing either singleplayer or multiplayer. If the user picks multiplayer they are taken to another screen to hook up to other fellow racers over PSN. This mode works okay, but there isn't any achievement or leveling system to make you feel like you've accomplished something for all those hours of online pwning. I would add in the leveling system like the newer FPSs have such as COD4's or Halo 3's. Level the player up and allow them more options for their vehicles in multiplayer. Implement a betting system with credit rewards for winning or exclusive ingame mods to vehicles for achieving certain multiplayer levels. All in all just give the player some sense of accomplishment for competing online.
Next up is fixing my biggest complaint with the first game. SINGLEPLAYER! Give us some kind of career this time around. I don't want to mindlessly race a linear series of tracks for useless "tickets." I liked the way DiRT was set up. Doing something like that would really improve the game. Give us a customizable character when we first start out. Let us struggle racing the low end local races and advance our way up to high end baja 1000 type races. I would like to see modifiable vehicles this time. Let us change the tires, engine, tranny, wheels, suspension, and let us tune them. I want to be able to upgrade my vehicles and tune them for specific tracks. I don't want it to be too in-depth like Forza 2, but I want to do more than just pick a vehicle and go. Give us more than the 10 year old system the first game shipped with.
The graphics, physics, handling, and sound don't need anything done to them. All are spectacular. I feel bad that the first game was rushed out just as a tech demo when it could have been so much more. I hope they sit down and think about the lay out of the game this time instead of just working on the technical aspects and then building a game around that in a month (crysis anyone?) If they can implement those changes then I think they can go AAA this time and truly give us offroading fans a system selling game!
If you have any suggestions for the game be sure to comment!