E3 Hands-On: Motorstorm Apocalypse - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 20 June 2010 / 3,847 Views
For those who haven’t kept up Motorstorm Apocalypse is taking a divergent path for the series and is focusing on what they call “urban offroad”. Some city somewhere has been hit by a devastating earthquake. Buildings are crumbling and all of the residents are evacuated. One might think that this is a terrible place to be, but to the Motorstorm guys this is an all new playground of offroad racing.
The demo I played was of one of the later levels in which the city is so far gone that even the Motorstorm racers have decided to beat a hasty exit. As I passed under the starting gate a helicopter hooked up to it and flew it away overhead. I barreled down the city streak and suddenly a tanker truck swerved onto the road and proceeded to do its best to take out everyone in the race. Presumably this tanker was driven by one of the two factions of people that have remained in the city.
Before I could land on the street after a jump the floor crumbled beneath me and I found myself continuing the race in an underground parking lot. Surrounded by all this craziness I did find it hard at times to figure out which direction the track continued and what was a dead end put there for aesthetic purposes only. The developers assured me that these were being worked out and signs would be added to help keep other gamers from making the same mistake.
This entire demo was done using a 3D TV and glasses and while the effect was cool I don’t think it would be worth getting a new TV over. I was happy to see that the level didn’t use any cheap 3D tricks like throwing things in my face.
Sadly that’s about as much as I got from my demo, I wish I could tell you guys about how many paths there were through the level or the state of the rubberbanding but with only one run through a single track I can’t really attest to either. I can tell you that the developer told me there would be some tracks that were designed for multiple laps while others were designed for just one drive through like the track I was on. Also I can tell you that the game was very fun as always and I’m looking forward to seeing how the Motorstorm style of racing is adapted to this new environment in the other tracks.
