However, on multiple recommendations, I tried the PS3 demo of PURE and loved it. It was enough to make me get it for the PC, as I like the control over the options and the generally better graphics.

Story: N/A

Needless to say this game does not sell it self on its rich storyline and narrative. The most you will get from your respective character of choice is a “WOOHOO!!!”, “Alright, yeah!!!” or “That’s what I’m talkin bout”. But then if you expected a storyline, you really don’t know the genre. The main aim of the game is to complete the championship and get to the numero uno position. You progress through 4 different stages, starting at D ending with A. To progress to the next stage you need to unlock a new class of engine by winning a certain amount of races. You also need to win a certain amount of races to get points to unlock the next subset of challenges within the stage. It isn’t an issue though, the game is easy enough that the majority of the time you can fluke a win.

Design: 7/10

This game feels like they released it for the console then hired the janitor to port it to the PC. It has a number of deal-breaker bugs right out of the gate that would put a lot of people off this game. First, is the vsync issue in Vista. You need to force vsync to be disabled on your graphics cards or the game will fail to load. On top of this, the loading screens frequently hang, the only known workaround, which I was able to use, is to Alt-Tab out of the game which seems to work. The game itself, once loaded, runs very well so at least there’s that. What’s odd also is that these issues have been known about for a good few months now and still there has been no patch released, as of writing this, to fix them.

Aside from this the only other gripe is the ATV building section. It really slows down the pace having to go into the builder and manually upgrade parts of your ATV, most of which don’t make any difference to its performance. Some of the aesthethic alterations allowed make no sense in my opinion, there’s these tiny mudguards beside the front wheels that will never be seen whilst playing or these metal plates that are tiny and sit in front of the back wheels. Personally, if the changes can’t be seen in online play, or even in singleplayer, then development time shouldn’t be wasted adding them as an option.

Gameplay: 9/10

What saves PURE though is the excellent gameplay. I’d go as far to say that this game feels closer to the likes of SKATE or SSX than a race game like NFS or GRID. Its shamelessly all about the ridiculous jumps and stunts (see my compilation vid below). In fact most of the time I’d completely forget about trying to get first and I’d concentrate solely on chaining together as many jumps and tricks as I could muster. Thankfully, there is a race type that allows for this, namely “Freestyle” where coming first is not required, rather the person that pulls off the most tricks and gets the most points will win. There is one mode called “Sprint” which is mainly about finishing the race as fast as possible, but these are usually quite short and more of a breather level before you get back into the action.

Presentation: 9/10

PURE looks stunning. When you pre-load your shocks and jump high off a high ramp the vistas and draw distances are staggering. Each level is like a postcard of the country you are driving in, and even though it is rarely needed, it is nice that they have given the player camera control to look around while you are flying through the air in slowmo pulling off your 1080′ flip. The trick and character animations are also flawless and chain together seamlessly.

Conclusion:

Overall this game was a blast. The single player campaign is quite short but it’s merely a taster for the online multiplayer action. It manages to be something most games of its genre fail at, and that’s fun. It’s not trying to be realistic or have a difficulty curve that will have you pulling your hair out, it’s a game that you can fire up after a long day of work and be smiling within minutes at the insane tricks you are pulling off followed by the kudos from the character you are controlling on the screen.

Score: 8/10

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