Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, It's like a complete game this time!
 

Those who played the first Motorstorm may have noticed that the game actually had the subtitle "Monument Valley." Well, the Motorstorm festival is back, and this time it's taking place on a pacific island. Instead of just sand, dirt, mud, rocks, and cliffs, this time racers also have to contend with water, dense jungle, and even lava flows. Not to mention the eighth vehicle class that just joined the party, the Monster Truck:


It looks like Evolution studios listened after the first game was harshly criticized for having a paltry 8 tracks, two gameplay modes (offline and online), and total lack of split screen multiplayer. So this time around, they're doing it up proper. Pacific Rift will have:

-16 tracks
-single player, 12-player online multiplayer, and 4-player split screen multiplayer.
-All the vehicles from the first game are returning, plus new vehicles for every class.
-Race modes added to the first game in downloadable content (time attack, eliminator)

Also, fancy new tech stuff! Seeing as it's out of the desert and into the jungle, foliage is going to play a much bigger part this time around. Vegetation will now bend and exert a resisting force when vehicles drive through it, and break when big vehicles barrel through it. This means new routes will open up for light vehicles as the heavy vehicles blaze trails.

Water is a new part of the tracks, and in addition to looking very nice, it has gameplay elements. Driving through water will rapidly cool down a racer's boost bar, shown as the boost bar turning light blue and having an evaporating steam effect. Water also has buoyancy and resisting forces, so some vehicles will have a hard time fording streams. Also, stay out of the deep waters or you're sunk.

Also new are the lava flows, which in addition to adding a new way to die, add another boost management element. When driving through exceedingly hot volcanic areas, the boost bar will heat up even without the player using the boost, shown by the bar turning red hot and having a flame effect. I have seen vids of a course that consists entirely of high ground among lava flows, punctuated by checkpoints with cooling water mist sprayers. Boost at your own risk.

Oh yes, they are also adding new controls for bikes and quads, like jump preload and the ability to duck, so expect some interesting new routes for the little guys. And of course, the game has support for PSN Trophies.

So anyway, a bunch of game trailers can be seen here.

Game hits stores on October 28, and the demo will be available on PSN starting Thursday, October 16th.

Edit: Holy crap, they are going nuts with vehicle variety. A quarry truck will be a playable vehicle. One of these things:

http://www.infomine.com/equipment/sellers/kbmi/775D.jpg

Off road racing in a quarry truck. That has gotta be a first.

That same demo is supposed to be hitting the PSN this Thursday.

I'll have to check it out - but I find that I have a hard time sticking with racing games over an extended period of time. I got the first Motorstorm mostly because of the fact that the only other game the PS3 had at the time was Resistance. I only played the game for a couple of weeks, and haven't touched it since :/.

Correction -- GameStop has a code to give you access to download the beta (think MGO, COD4 and World at War, etc).

Got a chance to play this at vendor show. It's much, much prettier than the first game, what with the obvious addition of green to the color palette. Racing fans should absolutely pick this up, if you're an off-road fan or not.

Oh, weird. Must be a new beta. Last I heard of a beta was quite a while ago, and it was not something to be showing to prospective buyers.

I played this at PAX, which is why I'm so interested in it. I liked the gameplay of the first Motorstorm a lot, but the environments and lack of tracks certainly did get old after a while.

I checked online play the other night and found about 100 players on the game servers, so I guess the old motorstormers are gearing up for the sequel.

I only played the demo of the first game, but I hated it. I admit I'm not the biggest racing game fan, but I had a really hard time controlling it, and even aside from that it just didn't do anything to wow me. I'll try out the second one when the demo hits the PSN in hopes that they somehow improved the controls, but I doubt I'll be getting this one either.

Well the website begs to differ:

I've never even heard of this game having a public beta. I know there was the demo you get from preordering or getting one of those episodes of Qore, but that's about all I've heard.

Just curious, Rockgamer, what vehicles did you try driving in the demo? The track in the demo was extremely rocky, resulting in insane bouncing (usually off a cliff) when driving anything with bad shocks. Also, if you tried driving the bike, those things are really hard to get used to, especially at low speeds (like the hairpin in the demo track).

And yeah, the beta I was talking about was not a public one. With good reason, it was before they did a lot of texture work, so it was pretty damn ugly. This was quite a while ago though.

Hmm, it was such a long while ago that I don't remember for sure, but I know it wasn't a bike. I'm pretty sure it was a four-wheel vehicle, like an ATV or something. I just remember sucking at it horribly, even after a few tries. I honestly couldn't get anything above last place. :(

Huh, ok. It was probably a trophy truck then. Just wanted to make sure you weren't test driving a rally car. They have almost no suspension, and blow up at the slightest provocation. If you're good with them, they rock, but definitely not a good starter vehicle.

Additional Spam:
Went by Gamestop to see what the demo thing was about. It's a code to redeem to get access to a demo. Pretty sure it's the same one coming to PSN on Thursday, but I guess I have no way to check, since it says it expired yesterday. Turns out they were supposed to give it to me when I reserved the game.

Anyways, if it's what I think it is, it's half of what Sony was demoing at PAX. If so, it's the level Rain God Spires, and you can play on it as a rally car, buggy, or trophy truck. Also, you can play single player or two-player split screen.

If I'm right, expect some big air on Thursday.

The original Motorstorm looked interesting, but a bit too thin on the ground to justify the price back when I first picked up my PS3. However, Pacific Rift is looking quite tasty and if a demo is coming I'll definitely have to give that a looksy.

Demo's out in Europe already. I'm assuming it'll be available here as soon as the PSN Store comes back up.

My pre-order demo code did actually work, even though it said it was expired. I'm not sure if this public demo will be the same or not, but if it is, it contains:

1 Track - Rain God Spires
2 modes - Single Player and Split-Screen 2-player
5 vehicle classes:
Single mode - Bike, Racing Truck, and Monster Truck
Multi mode - Buggy, Rally Car, Racing Truck

Not a bad demo, but it's a shame that it doesn't feature water, lava, or much of the vegetation. I guess they are splitting the tracks into 4 categories: Earth, Water, Air, Fire. So this is definitely an "Air" track.

Two new things I have noticed though:
1.) Crashes now have a crumple effect a la Burnout in addition to the parts-spraying goodness that the first game had.
2.) Tires now start the race clean, instead of looking muddy all the time like they did in the first game.

Oh, some links I forgot to add before:

Tech Demo (watch in High Quality)

Dev Blogs

Inspiration for Pacific Rift

Crashing

Vehicles

Soundtrack

I finally got around to playing the demo, and I still suck at it. I tried out all three vehicles, and got progressively worse with each one. So yeah, I'll be staying away from this one. It did look pretty, though.

Heh, oh well. I guess it takes a special kind for Motorstorm. "Lunatics Unite!"

Edit: Saw a TV spot for the game the other night. Pretty awesome because it used Wonderlust King by Gogol Bordello. I don't think that song is on the game soundtrack though, which is too bad.

Another Edit: The official Pacific Rift site is up now instead of the placeholder generic PS3 game site it had before. Some vids on there show a lot more of the tracks, and they look way more interesting than the one they put in the demo. Way to not entice people, Sony.

teh bump

Who else has got it? I know Qwarky does. Anyone else?