Forecast calls for another Storm

​MotorStorm has moved from a scorching desert to a lush tropical paradise and to a frozen mountaintop. Now in its fourth iteration, the self-proclaimed "lunatics" that drive the bikes, big rigs and buggies of this extreme racing competition are taking their over-the-top adrenaline-seeking exploits to the most exciting local to date: the urban streets.

 

While shifting gears from exotic settings to the winding roads of an island city might not seem like an expected direction for the MotorStorm series, an earth-shattering series of quakes and storms has turned this once docile environment into a murderous landscape of toppling buildings, hazardous routes and explosive action.

 

But even sporting the most dynamic courses of any racing game to date, is this latest trip through the Apocalypse worth the price of admission?

 

I'm going to go ahead and get the comparison to Split/Second out of the way. While you don't actually trigger any of the countless catastrophes occurring throughout the races of MotorStorm: Apocalypse, the crumbling environments, bullet-time focus shots and pounding orchestral soundtrack certainly bring Black Rock Studio's 2010 racer to mind. But Split/Second was all about controlling those events and outsmarting your opponents, whereas Apocalypse quickly becomes a matter of surviving the course more than worrying about the vehicles whizzing past or blowing up right next to you.

 

​This is one of my biggest gripes with the latest MotorStorm, actually. While the action is consistently jaw-dropping, the sheer amount of "stuff" going on requires your absolute focus on the road in front of you. This means the game feels less like a race and more like an attempt to "survive better" than all those other people on the track. It's a small complaint, but in a series where deciding what class of vehicle to drive was half the fun, you'll find yourself caring less and less about how your buggy will stack up against the larger and smaller competition and more time simply careening down whichever path doesn't appear to be exploding at the moment.

Rather than keep an eye on your 15 opponents, you'll instead focus on falling skyscrapers, erupting streets, scurrying pedestrians, chaingun-wielding choppers, towering infernos, hurled debris and AI that seems to crash directly in front of you at the worst possible moment time and time again. While the races are obnoxiously exciting, there's frequently too much going on at once, which can lead to seemingly unfair crashes that will leave you more frustrated than exhilarated as your near-flawless run to a qualifying position is ruined by an unavoidable disaster or a sliver of broken cement that manages to spin your car into a wall of rebar.

 

For every negative, though, there are a dozen positives for fans who are willing to muscle through the heart-breaking events and move on. Apocalypse provides a complete package of racing options with plenty to keep you playing for weeks to come.

 

​The Festival mode tells a silly tale while introducing players to the game's mechanics and providing a lot of helpful tips along the way. The racers have just two days to tear the city apart (as if it isn't doing a good enough job of that on its own) before "the big one" hits, with events spread across three difficulty levels. You'll get to try out each of the game's dozen vehicle classes and take on single races, elimination events and even a couple one-on-one showdowns.

While a couple difficulty spikes will leave you cursing at your television, the vast majority of the Festival's events are full of mind-blowing set pieces and solid competition. That competition is less about the other racers and more about you versusthe track, but I can't pretend it wasn't an absolute blast 90 percent of the time.

 

While PSN's outage prevented me from trying out the online portion of the game, it looks to support all the matchmaking trappings you would expect. There's also a load of vehicle customization to be done, collectable cards to locate on all of the Festival events, "perks" (like faster crash recovery) to equip, harder competitions to unlock for the truly masochistic and more.We'll check out online as soon as PSN is back up and running.

 

​Online or off, there's loads of content to get through and options to tweak. Courses can be run forwards and some can be reversed. You can even turn off all the landscape altering events or enhance a few races with stormy weather (Like a tornado!) and the like. Put simply, there's loads to do while the world is being destroyed.

Earlier complaints aside, this latest MotorStorm is a unique experience and easily the most explosive racer to date. I've never sped across the rooftops of skyscrapers and in and out of 40-story office buildings before, and that's only one such event found around every corner of this game. While some events get a bit too hectic, the occasional frustration is worth it for all of those wonderful moments of legitimate awe spread across all 20-plus tracks.

 

There's a smaller focus on the "race" this time around, but in a living, breathing world that's literally falling apart around you, Apocalypse provides a fresh take on the genre any fan should get a massive kick out of.

The official verdict: 4 out of 5

This review is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher.