MotorStorm: Apocalypse Gets Destructive & Creative

Sometimes to create something new you have to destroy what's old. Well, sort of. Developer Evolution Studios is giving fans a new kind of MotorStorm with Apocalypse.

After showing promise in its first outing back at the launch of the PlayStation 3, the MotorStorm series has yet to evolve into a bigger and better experience. Perhaps sensing that the franchise was at a dead end, the development team at Evolution Studios is trying to take things to the next level with Apocalypse. Befitting its name, this PS3 title has players racing through destroyed environments, from cities to beachfronts to subways. The game features 40 tracks in all.

The game's traditional Festival mode is now more story driven. The game follows the perspective of three different racers as chronicled by a journalist. Even though you might race some of the same tracks with the different racers, you'll experience the tracks through their perspective. So a track might be more or less busted up depending when that character raced it.

Another way that the game is trying to give you a varied experience is through some of the event moments that happen while you're racing. When I got my hands on the game, buildings were crumbling around me, explosions were happening, and dust and debris was obscuring my view. The MotorStorm series has been good at raising your heartbeat, but Apocalypse clearing raises things to a higher notch. These effects (which aren't strictly scripted for each lap or track) also pop out in 3D. It's pretty cool to run over a pedestrian in the environment in 3D and have them sail over your hood after they try to hang on to the front of your hood. The sense of speed wasn't the greatest in 3D - which is one of the things that made the previous MotorStorms good - but art director Simon O'Brien assured me that the team was dedicated to making the 2D and 3D modes in the game running equally fast by the time the game ships in the first quarter of 2011.

Apocalypse's online portion is blown out in a way that MotorStorm fans have never seen from their franchise. Racing online  (the game supports four-player splitscreen on/offline play, with up to 16-players total online) earns you XP which flows into a perk system that gets you handling, combat, and boost upgrades for your car. Boost in particular is handy, not only for speeding ahead, but because it can come into play with vehicles' combat mechanics. For instance, you can spend a little boost to side ram your enemies in either direction. You can also visually customize your car with your earned XP, as well as gamble for XP in online races.

But perhaps the coolest new online feature for Apocalypse is the fact that you can create your own races - complete with your own boost or win conditions, for instance - and share them online.

MotorStorm: Apocalypse should give fans of the franchise plenty of new features to chew on when it hits in the first quarter of next year.