The first time I heard about Pure, I thought "Extreme off-road ATV racing game made by Disney Interactive... What?"
A demo of the game was recently released, and I downloaded it more out of curiosity than anything. The first thing I noticed was the rather ugly textures on Rider-Dude. He wasn't pretty. What textures there were on his body were simply solid colors as far as I could tell. The camera then zoomed off our ugly little faded pink shirt and positioned itself behind rider-dude. "My goodness," thought I, "that mountain is pretty good looking, I guess. I bet it's just an impressive backdrop." Nevertheless, I had to admit the game looked intricate. The grass was thick and convincing, the terrain was detailed, the flora looked great overall. The lighting made the terrain even more pleasing to the eye. Apparently there are 48 different tracks over 7 locations, and if they all have this sort of detail, then hooray. Despite all this, the visuals as a whole were detracted from by Rider-Dude's pink shirt and it's blob of a texture.
I refer to the player's rider as Rider-Dude because of his incessant cries of "Totally!" and "Dude, that was awesome!" after most tricks. In fact, even the other racers shout out "totally radical" things after their own tricks. It's like they were all injected with concentrated surfer. While it's nice to see a game that makes the racers themselves actually real people, instead of emotionless, invincible robots, their constant jabber gets old quickly. The soundtrack has the same vibe, as the starting song was Woman by Wolfmother.
You don't really get the scope of the game until after the brief tutorial. They stick you on a track with 15 other racers, and after a few decent jumps and "Totally wicked!"-s out of your fellow Racer-Dudes, you are propelled off a cliff probably 20 stories in height. The music fades low, the camera pans out, you do a ridiculous trick, and you finally realize just what the game is getting at: height. Absurd jumps and huge cliffs really spotlight Pure's "Vertigo Rush" moments. (buzzword alert!)
Speaking of tricks, I really didn't like the trick system. It's a simple direction plus button way of doing it, which is fine, but it has a pretty bad landing system. If you are just stopping a trick when you land, it's a toss up as to whether you will make it or just crash. This probably has to do with the way your wheels hit the ground or something, but it became quite a nuisance not to be able to know if the trick would stop fast enough to prevent you smearing all over the mountainside.
Crashing is sweet. Rider-Dude launches off the bike, clutching at mid air, while the camera fades to black and white, reeling to the ground and bouncing along. The crashes feel solid, and usually there is a good reason for them to happen. The camera smashing into the ground is a nice addition, as if it was actually following you around. The biggest problem here is that there is no way to predict how long it will be before you get back in the race. Sometimes I would be back in a split-second, sometimes it would take up to five. This inconsistency, especially because it's in a racing game, irked me.
I noticed that there really wasn't any difference between the track and it's surroundings. There wasn't a Finely Detailed Track And It's Somewhat Detailed Surroundings that is common in racing games. The entire mountainside was given the same treatment as the track, and it really looked good. This, combined with many different branches of the track, gave a feeling of freedom to the game. There are borders to the track, and if you cross them, you crash for apparently no reason, but that is still better than invisible walls. Fortunately most of the borders were either rocky hills that you wouldn't want to go up anyways, or near-vertical cliffs.
Apparently there is a huge amount of customization when it comes to the bikes and riders, but that wasn't in the demo, so I can't comment on that.
Overall, Pure has a nice arcade feel, and reminds me of SSX Tricky, but with ATVs.
Anyone else downloaded the demo? Like it? Hate it? Discuss.
A demo of the game was recently released, and I downloaded it more out of curiosity than anything. The first thing I noticed was the rather ugly textures on Rider-Dude. He wasn't pretty. What textures there were on his body were simply solid colors as far as I could tell. The camera then zoomed off our ugly little faded pink shirt and positioned itself behind rider-dude. "My goodness," thought I, "that mountain is pretty good looking, I guess. I bet it's just an impressive backdrop." Nevertheless, I had to admit the game looked intricate. The grass was thick and convincing, the terrain was detailed, the flora looked great overall. The lighting made the terrain even more pleasing to the eye. Apparently there are 48 different tracks over 7 locations, and if they all have this sort of detail, then hooray. Despite all this, the visuals as a whole were detracted from by Rider-Dude's pink shirt and it's blob of a texture.
I refer to the player's rider as Rider-Dude because of his incessant cries of "Totally!" and "Dude, that was awesome!" after most tricks. In fact, even the other racers shout out "totally radical" things after their own tricks. It's like they were all injected with concentrated surfer. While it's nice to see a game that makes the racers themselves actually real people, instead of emotionless, invincible robots, their constant jabber gets old quickly. The soundtrack has the same vibe, as the starting song was Woman by Wolfmother.
You don't really get the scope of the game until after the brief tutorial. They stick you on a track with 15 other racers, and after a few decent jumps and "Totally wicked!"-s out of your fellow Racer-Dudes, you are propelled off a cliff probably 20 stories in height. The music fades low, the camera pans out, you do a ridiculous trick, and you finally realize just what the game is getting at: height. Absurd jumps and huge cliffs really spotlight Pure's "Vertigo Rush" moments. (buzzword alert!)
Speaking of tricks, I really didn't like the trick system. It's a simple direction plus button way of doing it, which is fine, but it has a pretty bad landing system. If you are just stopping a trick when you land, it's a toss up as to whether you will make it or just crash. This probably has to do with the way your wheels hit the ground or something, but it became quite a nuisance not to be able to know if the trick would stop fast enough to prevent you smearing all over the mountainside.
Crashing is sweet. Rider-Dude launches off the bike, clutching at mid air, while the camera fades to black and white, reeling to the ground and bouncing along. The crashes feel solid, and usually there is a good reason for them to happen. The camera smashing into the ground is a nice addition, as if it was actually following you around. The biggest problem here is that there is no way to predict how long it will be before you get back in the race. Sometimes I would be back in a split-second, sometimes it would take up to five. This inconsistency, especially because it's in a racing game, irked me.
I noticed that there really wasn't any difference between the track and it's surroundings. There wasn't a Finely Detailed Track And It's Somewhat Detailed Surroundings that is common in racing games. The entire mountainside was given the same treatment as the track, and it really looked good. This, combined with many different branches of the track, gave a feeling of freedom to the game. There are borders to the track, and if you cross them, you crash for apparently no reason, but that is still better than invisible walls. Fortunately most of the borders were either rocky hills that you wouldn't want to go up anyways, or near-vertical cliffs.
Apparently there is a huge amount of customization when it comes to the bikes and riders, but that wasn't in the demo, so I can't comment on that.
Overall, Pure has a nice arcade feel, and reminds me of SSX Tricky, but with ATVs.
Anyone else downloaded the demo? Like it? Hate it? Discuss.
