Black Rock's new off-road racer catches crazy air.
Rip around a tight corner covered with melted glacial Scree, I dig in, the nail nitrous boost and my pre-suspension bike at the top of a 45-degree jump. With a lurch, my ATV leaves the ground and launches into the air, floating hundreds of feet above the mountains of New Zealand before starting his sickeningly fast decent. Being the cool heads runner, I decide this is the perfect time to pull off a series of aerial tricks, including Flip Saddle, where I am on my quad bike seat and do a Backflip in Midair. The land that as a pro, some bank boost juice as a reward and speed off towards the next leap.It 'a typical moment of pure, the new off-road ATV racing title from Black Rock Studio and Disney Interactive, but the game is anything but. The developers of Black Rock, even before the studio Climax was bought by Disney, are not strangers to the racing game scene, having worked on ATV Offroad series and other racing titles for years. But rather than go the simulation route to their most recent project, Black Rock decided to take things in a completely different direction by focusing on wild, over-the-top action. The result is an incredibly satisfying thrill ride that can provide edge of your seat action in a surprising, inviting package.
Pure is a runner with the soul of a game of extreme sports. There are times when you'll be Gunning for the goal above all else, focused only on hitting your racing line and digging in taking corners perfectly. But most of your time is spent doing things that should not be physically possible, and this is pure when it is at its best.
The time standard basic racing control system is here - right trigger accelerates, left trigger brakes and the left analog stick steers your race. Like many other off-road racing games, you can also pre-load "your suspension system before taking off from a jump by quickly flicking down and then left to get stick even bigger plane. Vehicle feel is extremely important in racing games, and it was pure law. Bicycles are fairly clunky weight without feeling you get when their aircraft, tires and digging in the ground properly when you are taking corners. Although there is no damage modeling, you can knock opponents off the track or on land the head of unfortunate effect during a race, so paying to stay out of the AI drivers' on.
But the trick intuitive system is what sets Pure beyond. When your quad is in the air, trying to pull off tricks by pressing one of three buttons and make a direction to the left stick. You will start each race with Level 1 only available tricks. Land enough of these and the Level 2 tricks will open, followed by Level 3. Each of these is related to the number of keys, or the A, B and Y buttons on the controller Xbox 360, which we used primarily in our test for the PC version of Pura.
As you exit your trick availability during a race, will also bank nitrous boost, as demonstrated a blue liquid wedge under your trick meter and controlled by the spacebar / X button. Depending on the type of race you're attending will be constantly balance doing tricks, that fills your boost meter, and use the momentum, which takes away his ability to pull out of the higher level tricks.
To discourage to get in a groove, every trick on the fly is classified as "cool", "Tame" or "install", depending on how many times you've recently landed. The fresh make-up, momentum and more points you get. You can also optimize every move on the fly by holding down the left or right bumper at the end of the trick, that gives you even greater flexibility. The controls are intuitive, the tricks are wild and fun, and the classification system goes to try new things. In short, the controls easy to make pure climb, but difficult to put down the Holy Grail of video game controls.
The main objective is purely on the World Tour, a single player career mode where you choose a runner, build your bike and of which 10 to complete the stages of increasing difficulty. World Tour is easy with a tutorial, throws a few challenges easier way slowly and ramps up in difficulty and length. There are three single-player event types: Sprint Race and Freestyle. Sprint is all about speed and handling, and the tracks were shorter and meaner, with very few jumps with which to pull tricks and gain momentum. Race as a balance between technical guidance and air crowds, and the tracks are set up to give ample opportunity for boosting more jumps to pull tricks, for the sole purpose of boosting banking juice accelerate your path to the final.
Whereas the Sprint Race and they are all about crossing the finish first, the third mode, Freestyle, which is pure shines brightest. In the Freestyle, there is no target - is fighting against time to rack the largest and best trick score, and the tracks are abundantly sprinkled with jumps to help you along the way. Most arcade-like of all the pure single player modes, the Freestyle power-up that racers battle to grab during the event. Stars give you an instant special Trick (good points for crazy if you can pull off), a 2X doubled the score for a limited time, and an icon fills your nitrous boost. Build your trick meter, pull sick tricks, chain together before the combo meter runs out, and you can stay alive. Once you know your tricks and become an expert at their nails, the sheer Freestyle mode is extremely satisfactory.
Apart from the World Tour mode, there are other fully formed single-player modes in pure. Is there a way to test that allows you to search the records on tracks you've unlocked without the intrusion of other pilots, and single event is just that - the events you've already played a World Tour presented an à la carte. There is no way to the tournament, head to head or other collateral that may have also done in a more profound experience. As a result, is a relatively short game, depending on your skill level. Hardcore racing game fans probably finish the game within hours, while more casual players familiar with the genre might have more of a challenge. The good news is that pure multiplayer on-line is fairly robust and includes all three individual events per player plus a further excellent on-line only race type called Freeride.
In Freeride, competitors race against the clock to score points in several areas. If you are interested in going faster jumps in, you can focus on getting faster lap times. If you love crowds racking trick combo, you can follow this path of glory. If the air is the craziest thing you can go to jump higher. Black Rock could have simply moved a couple of pure single player modes on-line and called it a day. Instead, they transported all over and added extra, which goes a long way to extend the life of the game. Up to 16 players can join online (with AI filling if necessary), and hosts a number of options for how we choose to set their races. From test sessions I played, all performed without a hitch on-line, and the epic landscapes on each track looked like recovering as they did in single-player mode.
In a game where you spend large amounts of time high above the Earth, you pay for having environments look stunning on, pure and does not disappoint in this department. There are 12 areas in pure air from the cemetery of Ocotillo Wells, California, for the tropical island of Phi Kosa in Thailand. Each are made with love terrain, foliage, buildings, and impressive details as hovering helicopters and rickety dependencies. Part of the fun of any racing game is to know the tracks in detail to achieve a competitive advantage, and pure environments awesome task of making such a joy.
But after 50 races in the World Tour, 12 areas (pretty as they are) can get a po 'stale after a while' time, mainly because they are almost always created equally. Some of the Sprint races have a reverse installation, and I found myself wishing for a while 'more varieties of environments as I progressed through the game. Despite the repetition, each track has multiple branching paths and shortcuts that you can boost cliffsides on the remote or descent is muddy gulches. That helps keep each track fresh and somewhat 'gives you incentive to try new things.
When you complete events, you're rewarded with new clothes for the characters and new parts for your ATVs (you can keep more slots for multiple platforms). The four are not licensed, but there are parties to license the game, and you'll be spending a considerable amount of time to build bicycles different applications (race, sprint, freestyle). And even if it is fun to build the first couple of bicycles, the addition of new parts as you upgrade may be somewhat 'cumbersome, as you have to go back in the garage, find the part you unlocked and fits each bike. There is a fast-building function that lets you build various types of bicycles automatically, but there's auto-update feature, which I was wishing the 40th race.
The only major difference I noticed between the PC version of pure and its console counterparts is that the PC version is surprisingly more load times. The question seemed worse on the two Vista-based gaming platforms we tested the game, but the wait has been long on our XP machine too. Once out of the long load screens, however, pure well. Graphics settings allow you to turn shadows on and off and to tweak the overall graphics performance.
Closing Comments
Pure offers an outrageous, arcadey off-road racing experience with style and slickness. The controls are intuitive, the songs are pure and Eye Candy tricks are so crazy and over-the-top that you will find yourself gasping with GLEE when you land the first Lazy Girl. Although it is an explosion of play, is not the deepest game out there, and we found ourselves wishing for a few other ways, tracks and options round out the experience. But overall, is just pure fun, and this is what it's all about.