Pure Preview
By Matt Kelly
Last week we were invited to Sydney to check out Black Rock and Disney Interactive's new off road racer, Pure. During the lunch before the main event, there was a quiet nervous curiosity about the game. Without bashing Disney's previous entry into the core/adult gaming arena too hard, there was a lot of talk about Turok, how it fared and if Disney really knew how to do it. We'd already seen all the preview footage and screens, and there was no doubt that Pure definitely looked good. But of course not all things shiny play that well. We were lead into the theater and given our first taste of the game in action and it was pretty amazing. Admittedly we were watching it on a giant screen with a serious sound system to back it up but flat out, but it was pretty intense to watch.
The build we were viewing was still several months away from retail (roughly shipping in October) but just speaking on presentation, it could have shipped that day. Pure strays a bit from traditional track design and aims to keep them really natural, rather than lots of artificial ramps and track barriers. The environments were wide and open and had a real sense of space. If you've played Motorstorm or other racers of a similar nature, typically when there's a cliff it doesn't connect with the rest of the world. Pure on the other hand has environments that are very much fully formed, cliffs lead into valleys with mountains on the other side, full of trees and other greenery. The tracks were torn up as the race went on, and the numerous paths through the environment gave it this absolute feeling of openness.
And then there was the absolutely rawing sound scape to back it up. We've seen a lot of games demoed with an over the top sound system, but Pure seemed to really make use of it. Of course there was the quad bikes ripping around trying to pass us, but then we had an absolutely massive soundtrack to back it up. During the hands off section of the preview, we heard everything from drum and bass, hip hop, electro and some flatout techno. While most of the experience involved quietly nagging at ourselves going 'you know that track! What is it!', we did pick the Chemical Brothers - Get Yourself High, which was very appropriate given how much time you spend off the ground in the game.
However, as great as a cinema screen and sound are, it was time to put it to the test. We were led back out of the theater and it was time to get hands on. The core of the game is racing, place 1st and and win. Quad bikes were a good choice for the game, it was all very simple to pick up and start racing. The bikes were a nice mix between agile two wheels bikes, and cars, which of course you can't flip with your body weight. Before we get into the trick system it's worth mentioning the racing was really solid on its own. Bouncing across the tracks was just fun in itself, the bikes could handle some careful agile steering while also being quite friendly to some more wreckless driving. There was more than once we lost control of the vehicle and with a bit of careful steering were able to recover without losing to much pace. Plus that kind of handling onto some serious jumps, multiple paths and competitive racers, it's already pretty fun.
However what makes Pure pretty special is the trick and boost system. The best way to describe it is something like Tony Hawk meets offroad racing. The whole system is actually tiered in A, B and Y tricks (corresponding to the Xbox buttons, we're not sure if that's going to change for the PS3 version). A is the most basic, flinging your legs off to one side, hands off the bars and so on. Land a trick and you'll gain a portion of boost time. Landing a trick is a matter of knowing when to let off finger off the button. Land while still doing a trick and you'll greet the ground with a crunchy crash. If you manage to build enough boost up you'll unlock the next level of B tricks, involving flips in midair, swinging the bike around and other fun things. Move up from there again and you'll be on Y tricks, getting into much more stylized stuff and then finally you've got Y specials. Y specials are unique moves to each character and they score the big points. Some of them are just truly awesome and you can't help but giggle when your rider takes a prayer pose and a chorus comes on. And of course at this time, you've built up some seriously boost which allows you to level the racing field. It's a pretty clever system because you will get to see a wide range of tricks throughout the game rather than just pulling the same top scoring trick every time. It's certainly a lot more interesting than just seeing the same trick 30 times in a race. We didn't get to see a proper multiplayer match in action but we can imagine it's gonna be a hell of a lot more interesting seeing what your fellow racers are pulling out.
All up it does lead to a pretty fun and exciting experience. There was nothing more agonizing in the game then thinking you were top stuff trying to pull of a compo of tricks only to misjudge the timing and come off the bike head first into the ground. As far as game modes go, we got to play with the straight racing along with a much tighter sprint race. Sprint racing is a much shorter version of the tracks only involving a couple of jumps where timing, tricks and boost is everything. Finally we also got to see the trick scoring races, which mixed it up a bit from the other stuff we'd seen. Instead of racing for a place, the aim was to just rack up the points. We didn't actually get hands on time with this one, but it worked on a time limit, or rather a fuel limit. As you continued to race your fuel steadily dropped. There were pick ups across the track which allowed you to freeze your fuel, double your score and so on. The fighting for the power ups looked a lot more intense than normal though as it's possible for AI to run out of fuel and drop out of the race so they'll be going for them as hard as you are.
The way all the racing works in Pure, it is a really casual friendly gaming experience with a lot of room for the core players to go harder at it. And this is no truer than in the bike builder. A lot of games offer customizable options for vehicles but Pure will allow you to work through your bikes complete construction from scratch. I still all modular parts which are unlocked through the progression of the game but it's a step above the general customization options. Rotate down through the parts list and then switch through the different components and construct your bike. You've also got color customization options in there, along with detailing. We've heard several different numbers thrown around about how many combinations are available but you're looking at a good few thousand. It still lends itself to the casual gamers though with an auto bike builder which will allow you to have a bike built with your best parts to a template, and then you can fiddle there.
All up Pure played pretty solidly with few hitches. Like we said at the start, from what we sure it's surprising the game hasn't gone gold already. For the next few months it looks like the development team will be polishing everything we saw. The things we'd pick on at the moment are mainly to do with track design, when perhaps the path to follow isn't quite so obvious. Along with that some of the trick animations were a bit mechanical. Given there's still a good couple of months to the shipping date, Blackrock have got a lot of time to polish these aspects, and if they do, be prepared for a ripper of a racing game.
01/07/2008
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