Model trains, Lego cities, remote control airplanes--I've long been captivated by small-scale versions of everyday things. Growing up without the allowance to maintain those expensive hobbies, I turned to Hot Wheels and Micro Machines for my fix, and when Codemasters' released their 1991 Nintendo classic Micro Machines at the height of the diminutive toys' popularity, my pint-sized obsession joined my other great love: video games. That childhood wonder resurfaced all these years later when Evolution Studios--the developer responsible for the full-sized Motorstorm series--released the first trailer for Motorstorm RC. Tiny cars buzzed around dirt tracks and launched off skate park ramps, and in those 80 seconds the game went from unknown to must-buy status for me. Now that I've finally gotten my hands on it, let's see how it fairs against my admittedly high expectations.
The meat of Motorstorm RC is the Festival circuit, a series of 48 races and challenges that take place across 16 unique tracks in 4 major landscapes. Monument Valley has a rugged, rocky feel, while the tropical courses of the Pacific Rift would be at home in any rally racing game. Things get chilly in the Arctic Edge, where you'll throw your car through icy corners and over frozen puddles, and the Apocalypse tracks provide an urban setting of cracking sidewalks and dimly lit workshops. Earning medals in events will open up new events and vehicles for your use.
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| The warehouse guys have too much time on their hands |
While you'll be fighting it out with a field of AI-controlled opponents in standard Race events, Evolution Studios included other recurring challenges in an attempt to keep things fresh. There are Hot Lap events, which task you with completing one lap on a given track within a certain time, Pursuit races that require you to overtake a certain number of vehicles within a time limit, and the most unique--Drift challenges, wherein you must acquire drift points quickly to succeed. Truthfully, the Race, Hot Lap, and Pursuit event types feel pretty similar because your overall goal is the same: get around the track as quickly as possible. The Drift events, however, are another beast requiring a very different approach. Shifting your car's weight from left to right as you skid through turn after turn, all without bumping into walls or losing the drift can prove wickedly difficult.
The game's difficulty, as a matter of fact, is one of the things that surprised me about it the most. The cutesy nature of the radio-controlled cars belies the formidable challenges you'll find here. The game engine simulates the physics of these Lilliputian machines accurately, so every bump in the road or twitch of your finger on the analog stick can send your vehicle careening into a wall. Combine the touchy controls with a camera that limits how much you can see of the turns ahead, and completing some of the tougher events becomes an exercise in track memorization and near-perfect execution of speed management and cornering at all times. There is an aerial camera option that mitigates this issue somewhat, but I found that it made the action feel too remote (har-har) for my taste. At a time when game developers seem to think it necessary to coddle players and shield them from adversity, Motorstorm RC's difficulty is a relief, and the satisfaction you feel after finally besting a particularly arduous event is rewarding.
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| I don't need no friggin' snow tires! |
The vehicles you'll unlock by earning medals in Festival events fall into eight classes: SuperMinis, Racing Trucks, Monster Trucks, Buggies, Rally Cars, Big Rigs, Muscle Cars, and Supercars. Each class of vehicles behaves quite differently from the others; SuperMinis, for example, are a jack-of-all-trades class, offering average speed and cornering, whereas the Muscle Cars are the resident drifting class--heavy, powerful, and happy to leave thick layers of rubber on the track. You'll be required to drive every class of vehicle throughout the Festival, and you'll be amazed at how different a track can feel in a Buggy as opposed to a Racing Truck. Within each class are a handful of models to unlock, but it's hard to tell the difference between them. A display of all the vehicles' traits (acceleration, cornering, weight, etc.) would have been a welcome addition, but as it stands, it feels like choosing one Big Rig over another, for example, is largely arbitrary.
Graphically, Motorstorm RC goes for a realistic style, with lighting, shadows, and gritty textures that all do a pretty good job of lending the cars and environments an appearance of substance. That same realism, however, contributes to one of the game's biggest flaws: on many tracks it is hard to see the edge of the road. On some courses this problem is alleviated by the careful placement of objects that outline the road's perimeter: bright neon lights, thick sailing rope or plastic mesh fences like you'd see at construction sites. On other circuits no such demarcations exist, and it will take quite a few collisions with the walls before the player gets a feel for the general layout of a track.
With regard to the music, it feels like Evolutions Studios resorted to an approach described by the character James St. James in one of my favorite films, Party Monster: "When all else fails, play techno! It's nondescript, non-recognizable, and everyone will think you're so cutting edge." Was there some convention of racing game developers back in 1995 where it was decided that all future entries in the genre would be dominated by techno? I'm not hating on techno in a general sense; just saying that what's available here is pretty bad. Predictable thumping house beats, bouncing synths, and razor-sharp dubstep drops accompany the whine of your RC engine around the track, and after playing the game for about an hour, you'll probably have heard all of it. Maybe it's just the retro nostalgia that the game evokes, but I feel like this would have been a perfect showcase for chiptune. If nothing else, more genres could have been represented here.
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| Behold, the RC at play |
Outside of the Festival circuit, you'll find the Wreckreation and Playground modes. Wreckreation provides access to time trials for every track in the game as well as local split-screen multiplayer racing. As there is no true online multiplayer in the game, the local play is your only option for racing against human rivals, though I imagine that having only one quarter of the screen to work with could exacerbate the viewing distance issue I mentioned earlier. Online functionality is limited to issuing challenges to your Playstation Network friends to beat your times in different events, either through the PSN directly, or via integrated Facebook functionality.
The Playground is a casual mode that lets you drive any of your unlocked vehicles around a soccer field, skate park, basketball court, and the scaffolding of an apartment building. I was skeptical about this feature at first, but I soon succumbed to the simple joy of shooting my SuperMini off of skate ramps, through basketball hoops, and using it to knock a soccer ball into the net for a clutch goal. There are some fun secrets to be found in this mode as well, and if you want access to everything the game has to offer, you'll need to get creative here.
Because my colleague and I are very much completionists when it comes to Achievements and Trophies, I feel it's only right to briefly review the Trophies available for Motorstorm RC. Most are fairly mundane, requiring you to earn a certain number of medals in the Festival Circuit and complete all events in each of the four areas within a certain time. Given that the game doesn't support true online multiplayer, the absence of multiplayer Trophies is understandable and appreciated; there are two Trophies that require you to accept challenges from your PSN friends and beat their times, but these can be boosted by yourself through the use of a dummy profile. There are a few fun Trophies awarded for accomplishing certain feats on the Playground too. Unfortunately, there are quite a few Trophies attached to the two DLC packs already available for the game (Pro-Am Festival and Carnival Festival), which means they are a required purchase for someone with my level of obsessive-compulsive disorder regarding Achievements/Trophies. This is a practice that I want to see game developers abandon, as it feels like a cheap, exploitative tactic to make more money off a specific subset of gamers.
The Final Word
Motorstorm RC may not sit well with fans of modern racing games, players who are used to viewing the action from track level rather than above it, and who expect their virtual vehicles to respond to their inputs in predictable ways. It's true that at times the RC controls can feel unforgiving or twitchy, but I think that's precisely what makes flying through these tracks so intense and, after a bit of practice, ultimately rewarding. The car selection and customization is meager, the music is banal and uninspired, and the graphics, while pretty, can sometimes obscure your path on the track. Despite these drawbacks, the game is addictive, and I recommend it for arcade racing aficionados who enjoyed games like Micro Machines and Ivan 'Iron Man' Stewart's Super Off-Road back in the day, and to anyone who's looking for a unique racing experience on the Playstation 3.
7/10
Motorstorm RC is available now on the Playstation Network for $9.99, and you'll get the VITA version free with your purchase of the PS3 version.
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