Dorkus Malorkus

I took a little bit of time to finally get this post done, but that’s because I wanted to give myself some time to get to know the software available.  This isn’t going to be an in-depth review of the software I have, but more a general first impression.

First things, first.  There’s not a lot of software available.  I knew this when I bought the PS3, but I already pointed out my reasons for buying it prematurely in part 1.  There are some decent titles coming out soon-ish, but let’s face it — there’s just not enough compelling reasons to buy a PS3, yet.

With that out of the way, I’ll take a second to talk about the only game I bought w/ the PS3:  Motorstorm.  I happen to love off-road racing games, so I was actually excited to have this game.  Now I love racing games in general, but the added complexity of having to master all of the bumps and pits along the track makes it even more challenging and fun.  John pointed out that it’s the 3D aspect of the game that draws me in — I never thought about it that way, but he’s right.

Before I get into the specifics of Motorstorm, let me speak in more general terms about PlayStation controls.  Ever since the PlayStation 1, I’ve noticed that controlling people w/ the dual analog sticks has never quite felt “right” to me.  I first noticed it playing Medievil w/ my (then) father-in-law; the character moved VERY precisely, but unnaturally so.  Instead of characters that feel like they have momentum, the little person on-screen would immediately face the direction you were pointing towards.  This was further complicated by the fact that the dual analog sticks were, and still are so tall.  I believe that the stick height is a big part of it, but when I played the first PS2 Madden, I realized that they’re not fully to blame — Madden’s characters definitely have momentum.  So two generations of PlayStation have passed, and the sticks still have that same feel.  If you love the PS1 & PS2 controller feel, then you’re gonna love the Sixaxis’ feel.  Unless you love rumble, of course.

Next on everyone’s mind, of course, is graphics.  I’ve only got one full game, but I downloaded several demos from the PS Store (and have Virtua Fighter in the mail on it’s way to me).  Graphics look… good.  Having played the 360 for over a year at this point, I’m not at all amazed.  I don’t see anything in PS3 that stands out as “better” than the 360.  When I’m racing around in Motorstorm, things look great — you’ve likely all seen it on the demo kiosks at your local gaming store, so I won’t go into more here.

One of the first things you’re greeted w/ in Motorstorm is ridiculous load times.  I have NO IDEA why they need to load so much data just to let me choose a vehicle, but it was a stupid idea.  What’s worse is that the vehicles you “unlock” are merely skins.  They don’t seem to have different stats, at all.  There are, however, six or so different vehicle classes, and each of them controls differently, but choosing one motorcycle over another is pretty much a waste of time — just take the first one that comes up.

Once you get into actual racing, one of the cooler parts about the game is that there are mulitple paths and elevations around the course.  The lower paths are deep mud, but they’re relatively smooth.  The biggest, slowest vehicles fare really well here, and since they’re not slowed down by the mud, it tends to even them out.  As a beginner, these courses are generally easy to follow, and your vehicles crush the lighter ones, so it’s easy to win races in the mud.  The next type of paths are the reaaally bumpy ones.  The middle vehicles have HUGE amounts of suspension travel, so they’re really well suited to these routes.  Good stuff.  Lastly, the smooth tracks are suited to motorcycles and rally cars, both of which are very fast vehicles.  The smooth courses are longer, for balance.  It’s up to the player to decide which route to take, and when to cheat by going on a route that’s not made for your vehicle. 

(My copy of Virtua Fighter 5 just came in the mail, so I’m starting to get impatient since I want to post this before I play)  Crashes and AI seem pretty cheap to me.  I find myself often stuck on my vehicle’s side.  Since there’s no ability to manually right my vehicle, you’re left to wait for the game to reset you.  No matter how much you get ahead, the game always catches up to you, so a late-race crash usually means you’re gonna go from first to about 11th out of 15.  Luckily, it seems to be equally fair in letting you easily catch back up, but it’s still very frustrating.  Worse than that — if your vehicle rolls at all, touching your roof to the ground automatically makes it explode.  Lame.  For such rough and rugged vehicles, they seem really brittle.

There’s only one offline mode.  You win races to win points, which are used to unlock more races and the vehicle skins I mentioned above.  You have no choice in what’s unlocked, nor any choice of how your points are spent.  Once you gather x points, y item is unlocked; lame.  I haven’t gone online to do any competitive racing yet.  For each race, the game chooses which vehicle(s) you can use, so you can’t get too comfortable settling into one particular class;  no choice = irritating.

The physics feel great.  Each vehicle has it’s own distinctive mass, momentum and acceleration, which really determines how you attack each of your given lines through the course.  I would’ve liked to have control over what gear I’m in, but there’s seemingly only one gear.  Bouncing around the track and off of ramps is fun, but if you come down on a rock or on your side (or roof, like I already mentioned), you can pretty much count on your vehicle exploding.

In-game soundtrack = butt-tastic.  I turned it off.  Vehicle sounds neither annoy, nor impress, so I’ll count them as adequate.

I’d like to write more, but I want to play Virtua Fighter.  :D