The MotorStorm series centers on the "MotorStorm Festival", a unique music and off-road racing gathering of what they describe to be "lunatics". Racers from around the world meet up with their heavy machinery and race it out on some of the most extreme environments they can find. Pacific Rift is the location for this festival, and as you'd expect, it takes place in the lush, tropical and volcanic Pacific islands area. The new location has a little bit of everything. Thick jungles, sunny beaches with sparkling blue water, and barren ash covered volcanic craters with active lava flows. The choice was a perfect one, as it introduces much racing variety and many new possibilities all within a relatively small area.

MotorStorm is a weird animal. It's more of a Mad Max, balls-to-the-wall style racer than an organized racing event. You have a rough, ungroomed racing environment with branching paths and several completely different types of vehicles competing simultaneously. With a field of up to 20 racers driving everything from dirt bikes, to rally cars, to the newly introduced monster trucks, Pacific Rift competitors just let it all out and hope to not die trying. Intense is not the word... perhaps visceral is a better description. Even from the slowest-looking vehicles, there's plenty of speed and action going on at all times. Parts are flying, cars are overheating and bursting into flames, bikers are throwing punches, drivers are being run down... yeah, it's crazy. The original MotorStorm was the same way, but Pacific Rift really pushes it to the limit. The intense action and gritty environments make the series like no other, and personally, it strikes all the right chords.

Gameplay and control are similar to the original MotorStorm but refined and tweaked. The lighter more agile vehicles are skittish and can take smaller, more dangerous routes and shortcuts, and the big heavy beasts are slower to respond and more sure footed, and have an easier time in mud and thick brush. Despite having many distinct vehicle-types, the balance is just about right on. The vehicles feel more grounded this time around and even though there are still huge jumps and drops, the "moon physics" are less of an issue. The environments are still loaded with obstacles, many of which can be destroyed, but that again depends on the weight and condition of your vehicle. Like before, clipping something or flipping while moving fast will most likely cause you to damage your vehicle beyond repair, resulting in a quick position reset. It does gets a little annoying when a seemingly little bump causes your vehicle to burst into a ball or parts, although it is definitely improved over the first game. You don't really lose much more than a second or so, and sometimes it helps to manually reset the car on the track using the Select button if you feel you've gone too far off the proper racing line and want to save some time. As for additional controls, bikes and ATVs can now bunny hop and the drivers can crouch to help clear certain obstacles a little more easily. As before, all vehicles and riders can taunt/honk their horn, and the bike/ATV riders can punch to the left or right. Other vehicles can now perform a little left or right bump to help provide a little breathing room. The biggest strategic bit of gameplay is still centered around the boost gauge. With the exception of the first 10 seconds of a race, every vehicle has the ability to boost. The longer a boost is used, the more the gauge fills up, and when/if it reaches max, you overheat and burst into flames. Before, the only way to cool down was to just lay off the button for a while. In Pacific Rift, you can utilize various sources of water such as streams, puddles, sprinklers or waterfalls to help cool down your engine and allow more continuous boosting. Lava or hot sources will do the opposite however. This adds a nice amount of strategy in choosing which paths to take and even then, which racing line to stick to.

MotorStorm 2 is an incredible looking game, and neither the demo nor the screenshots do it justice. Sure, some of the textures seem a little low quality when standing still and looking around, but in motion it all comes together beautifully. Like MotorStorm 1, Pacific Rift has a really impressive lighting engine and a subtle amount of motion blur that just gives the game a realistic almost CG look. Racing through the thick, dark and hilly jungle and then giving way to the warm glow of the setting sun alongside a pristine sandy beach and sparkling deep blue water is pure eye candy. The environments are tremendous in size, and visibility appears to go on for miles. There's a nice touch of volumetric mist, fog and smoke and all sorts of impressive particle effects. The more volcanic environments look a little flatter and less flashy, so the occasionally spotty texture work is more noticeable. There is no shortage of little visual details and touches, like the dust and dirt building up on the vehicles lap after lap and persistent damage to the environment. Overall, Pacific Rift is a beautiful game, and I'm a fan of the overall style and presentation.

On the audio side, the frenzied action is highlighted by a loud thrashing, thumping soundtrack. It's not anything I would listen to casually, but it fits in with the whole music/racing festival vibe. If you dislike it, Pacific Rift support true XMB custom soundtracks and playlists, so feel free to race to the sounds of ABBA if you wish. The sound of twisting metal, grinding gears and dirt-gripping tires come through loud and clear, as do the various distinct engine noises from the variety of vehicles. Surround sound is put to excellent use. It’s worth it to crank the speakers.

The one biggest issue with the original MotorStorm was the very bare-bones single player experience. Basically, there was no experience at all. You had a list of races, one after another grouped together in "Tickets", and most of the exciting content was unlocked very early in the game. There was no real feeling of progression or organization. Evolution Studios totally fixed that. Broken up into 4 themes, there are a number of events with varying gameplay types, vehicles and courses in the Festival mode. There is also an overall ranking bar that when reaching different milestones unlocks new content, whether they be events, vehicles, paint jobs, extras features and whatnot. You always feel like you are progressing through the game, racing in more and more difficult events all while needing to move from theme to theme. Besides just straight up races, there are timed speed events with checkpoints, eliminator events, and even some time/damage/vehicle restricted types. Besides the Festival mode, the game also once again has the Wreckreation mode, which can be used to practice, browse leaderboards, take on ghost vehicles and more. The variety alone is a tremendous improvement. Also fixed is the game's difficulty and AI. No longer is the game's difficulty curve as steep as the 300' tall ridge that you race along. Unlike MS1, the rubber band AI is not really a problem, and throughout most of the events I never felt that the competition was unfairly able to catch up and overtake. Sometimes one particularly aggressive CPU racer would jump out ahead and require you to play catch up, but nothing struck me as being as difficult or brutal as the original. The other problem in MS was the very strange load times associated with choosing a vehicle. Evolution Studios not only improved that, they also provided a few different methods of browsing your garage, from simple 2D art to a virtual 3D garage view.

The online mode, although fairly straightforward, was a ton of fun in the original MotorStorm. MotorStorm: Pacific Rift really pushes the experience into the next generation, with rankings, leaderboards, stats, matchmaking, voice chat and support for up to 20 racers. On top of that, there are a good number of gameplay types and modes to keep the community very, very busy. Multiplayer is extremely enjoyable once again and online performs very well. Chasing down friends driving smaller vehicles with a big rig or monster truck never, ever gets old. One particular feature that a number of players requested was local split screen, and Evolution definitely obliged. Up to 4 players can race together locally and the game does a good job in handling all the action. Downloadable content, including tracks, themes, vehicles and extras are obviously planned and coming in the future.

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is everything I would have hoped for in a MotorStorm sequel. Sure, it still has some of those quirks found in the original that players may love or hate, but Evolution Studios has put together a well-rounded racer that improves greatly on the original in every way. Lunatics Unite!