MotorStorm Monday: Crashing in Pacific Rift

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Today the staff at Evo are doing a little dance and breathing a huge sigh of relief. For today is the day of our fist gold master candidate, which as I write this is winging its way to assorted testers around the world ready for them to give MotorStorm: Pacific Rift one last hammering. This isn’t the end, chances are there still a few bugs to be fixed, but we’ve finished dessert, and are now just waiting for coffee and the bill. Phew.

But rather than browsing through vacation brochures, I thought this impasse would be best spent writing a few blog posts which answer some of the questions that have been floating around the internet about Pacific Rift. The first one of which I noticed is how many people I’ve seen decrying the fact the lovely little pause camera from the first game isn’t present in the recent demo.

Well guess what? We’ve taken it out because we’ve introduced a photo mode to the main game, essentially the old pause camera on steroids. Hopefully it will be a good substitute and give your greasy little paws something to do while the game is paused, other than just going to the khazi. No doubt some of you will probably use it for rubbing our noses into any graphical glitches you may find, or taking comedy pictures of dismounted drivers looking like they’re humping trees, but hopefully more of you will use it for grabbing some ace action pictures of the carnage and destruction we’ve worked so hard to give you in the game. You see we like the carnage in MotorStorm.

Years of doing more sanitized racing games, coupled with an unhealthy obsession with breaking stuff really made us try and push the boat out with the amount of things that falls apart in the game.

This desire for destruction gave us a few headaches when designing the game. The problem with racing games (and Motorsports in general) is that crashing is probably the most spectacular and exiting part of the whole affair. Unfortunately, crashing is also mutually exclusive to winning.

After much deliberation we were left with two solutions to the problem –

    Option 1 – Every time you crash in MotorStorm one of our army of in-house vivisectionists ritually sacrifices a cute kitten to punish MotorStorm players and make sure they learn that crashing will only lead to kitty Armageddon.

    Option 2 – Make crashes look awesome, dismember the vehicles, spew bits across the track, crumple them, crush them and toss the drivers into the path of other vehicles causing bigger and more spectacular crashes. Most importantly allow players involved in the crash to savor the carnage and then get back into the racing with as little time lost as possible.

Guess which one we picked?

The levels of destruction in the first MotorStorm were pretty good, but this time around we really wanted to go to town. First off we developed a completely new vehicle deformation system that realistically crumples mashed vehicles into twisted wrecks, as well as throw components across the track. The end results are, in our honest opinion, smashing (excuse the anglo-centric pun). Secondly we took a real close look at the way we throw ragdoll drivers around, because breaking cars is amusing, but seeing your driver fly through the air to land in a crumpled heap only to be run over by a monster truck, tossed around and end up as a hood ornament on a big rig is the pinnacle of the whole MotorStorm experience. Don’t worry though, it’s more ‘Tom and Jerry’ than ‘Faces of Death’. Good clean wholesome fun.

So, crash a lot, enjoy it, and send us your photo mode screenshots of all that lovely carnage. And if you’ve used photo mode to take pictures of things you think we got wrong, please address them to –

Uzbekistan Automobile and River Transport Agency,
3 Usman Yusupov Street
Tashkent
Uzbekistan

Till next time.

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64 Comments

5 Author Replies

  • Neither M2 nor R2 have impressed me this year. Yes, numerous fixes and updates have been implemented, but it not ‘a new game’. It is nothing more than an addon for me. With all games coming up this fall, we have to pick only the best. Neither M2 nor R2 is on that list.

  • Awesome, im gonna buy this little gem.
    Good luck with the GM candidate

  • I have a question?

    Have the loading times been addressed in the menu system (how long does it take to select vehicles and load tracks)? In the first version, the loading was a KILLER.

  • I personally don’t agree with lifeRPGs (1), but I respect his/her opinion (to be wrong). :P

    Besides noticing the pause menu… “thing”, I’ve seen footage showing significant differences between the press release and demo versions. I’m not sure which one was which, but that’s a pretty important thing to point out. (ESPECIALLY if it’s the demo version that’s inferior.) It was in the PlayStation.com forums when I read about it.

  • Oh, by the way… did you actually test the Ritual Sacrifice of Kittens idea, or did it not make it past the R&D phase. XD

  • The demo was pretty bad. If the final game is like that, then this game deserves to fail.

  • Just curious: I am playing the M2 demo–and you can’t steer via motion sensing like you could in the M1 demo and game—–will that feature be in the final game? I love steering by motion sensing in MotorStorm—I am not a big racing fan but it was the feature that made MotorStorm stand out to me hehe!

    • Hi zookey,

      Yes, one of the controller layouts in Pacific Rift is just for you, with full sixaxis tilt steering.

      Cheers.

  • I never bought the first Motor Storm since it felt incomplete. I’m pretty excited about Motor Storm 2 though. It’s going to be my 3 buy in October!
    1. LBP
    2. Socom (keeping the official Sony headset and reselling the bluray disc)
    3. Motorstorm 2

  • It would have been sweet if for a few seconds your character will get thrown from the wind-shield or bike and then dodge the on coming players. If someone hits you they get extra boost or something. Maybe a trophy for so many hits.

  • HA! One of the funniest posts yet here on the blog! Thanks for that!

    Question!

    Sorry for my ignorance, but for the “photo mode” in pause, do you mean that we will be able to take screenshots of the crashes and it will be sent to out pictures folder on our PS3’s harddrive?

    Just wondering!

    looking forward to the demo of this game!

    • Hi FritoZ,

      You guessed right, all photo\’s taken in the game can be exported to the XMB, and from there it\’s up to you. Print them out, paper your lounge, print it onto toilet paper, whatever you want.

      Cheers.

  • This is my october buy list.
    Deadspace 10-14 $60
    Socom 10-14 $60
    Farcry 2 10-21 $60
    LBP 10-21 $60
    Fallout 3 10-28 $60
    MoterStorm 2 10-28 $60

    Then I have November
    Naruto: NS 11-4 $60

    That is a two week pay check :(
    Resistance 2 11-4 $60

  • Things i’m looking forward to in Motorstorm 2

    1) quicker load times

    ..I remember in Motorstorm 1 every timeyou chose a different car vehicle to look at it took FOREVER to just load the car model…sheesh!

    2) More tracks!

    not just reverse tracks! MotorStorm 1 seemed pretty light..hopefully you guys will DOUBLE the amount of courses (not just reverse tracks!)

    3)2 player Split screen!

    WE NEED THIS!!! I still can’t believe Motor Storm 1 shipped without this feature..that really killed it’s replay value for me and my friends..

    I know it’s late in the development cycle to bring these up, but i’m sure you guys have heard all of these from other people!

    cheers!

    :)

  • Would you please comment about the difference between the Qore demo and the final game in graphics?
    Why aren’t you creating more hype about your game with extensive footage from different tracks?
    Thanks =)

  • same game different map as far as i’m concerned, there’s too much other good stuff out to buy the same game twice. maybe once it hits the bargain bin i’ll pick up a copy.

    and yeah, the UK exclusive invite demo was basic too.

  • @12 FritoZ
    You are gonna be so happy man, all those issues were addresed on Motorstorm 2

  • The demo is alot of fun, but I wish you would have added in the pause and screen grab features so we could try that out.

    Thanks for the info and the demo

  • I picked up both Resistance and Motorstorm in the last 3 months, and I am so excited for both these new games. I just wished that R1 and M1 had trophies. :(

  • Man im not sure what heppened me to me and this game. I just all of a sudden stopped playing it. I think the online glitching ruined my experience that first time around and i never tried again after the update.

  • Looks great. I might have to pick this one up if it supports 1080.

  • I was one of the lucky ones that got the MotorStorm PS3 bundle. Now, when I got a PS3, I had no idea games were this fun.

    MotorStorm blew my mind, I don’t have an HDTV, but the graphics make me say “Dear god…” Every time I play. And that was in the DESERT! This is in a beautiful tropical island full of beautiful objects to smash, AND look at!

    I am getting Pacific Rift if I have to murder someone(Jokingly, of course)

    But things I’d like to see improved(Which I hope they are), is the loading times. The general loading times were a bit annoying, and it was kind of crazy getting put on hold for a race because you switched your car and the loading times killed it.

  • Please no more slow-mo crashes, they look a lot better when they’re going at full speed.

  • I skipped on purchasing Pure because I really want to get M2 in October, I know it will be an amazing racer and M1 was already good, this will blow it out of the water. With M2 and Burnout Paradise, I’ll now have the 2 best arcade style racers on PS3.

  • Nigel thanks for the post.

    I too agree with some other people here, I loved the motion steering in Motorstorm 1 and wish it would have come to MS 2.

    I just found out this past weekend that there is motion steering in Burnout as well as stick steering, so wondering if maybe a future update could incorporate this as well into Motorstorm 2…(have an option if you like the stick for steering use it, if you want motion steering, chose that option).

    Other than that one feature, the game is a lot of fun.

  • @20: Trust me on this one. Buy an HDTV as quickly as you can. On an SD screen, the PS3 graphics look better, but on an HDTV, they’ll look genetically different.

  • Good to hear of a photo mode! Youtube support would kick ass as well, but I know that’s only a pipe dream…Maybe with the PS4 eh? Anyway, this should be fun especially considering it’s going to have splitscreen!

  • I have 1. Not sure about 2. I’ll be spending plenty soon so I can wait and see how this one fleshes out.

    :P

  • @12, you’re in luck

    1.) Loading time is much better
    2.) There are 16 tracks and they are NOT just reverse tracks
    3.) There is 4 player split screen!

  • Please please tell me this has freind invites and then the game is mine. The fact that gta 5 prologue or whatever its called does not have this feature was a bloddy big mistake and the reason it collects virtual dust on my hard drive.

    I know you hate references to xbox but the freind invite thing is a must on all games.

    DTS MAN

  • @28 (DTS MAN), that could also be seen as a Home reference :)

  • @15 Fersis and #27 se7enthsign-psn-

    thanks guys! that’s great to hear, i haven’t been following the development on this game as mush as others, so i’m glad to hear that those issues have been recognized and dealt with-

    I haven’t played the demo yet, but what’s with some people hating on the graphics/gameplay already?

    MotorStorm 1 blew me away, like #20 Crimosn Ryan said earlier- I can’t imagine this game not being 100x better!

    I wonder if the demo that will hit PSN for non-Qore subscribers is going to be the exact same demo that was released earlier?

    either way, looking forward to some insane explosions and flying mud!

    now i gotta go back to work..

    **good luck everyone on LBP beta codes today!**

  • Nigel, thanks for assuring the “Lunatics” out there in Motorstorm land that the PAUSE camera has been implemented with the PHOTO mode. One of the best things in Motorstorm for me was the ability to just gawk at the beautiful 720p carnage, and I’m glad Evo has improved upon that ability for Motorstorm Pacific Rift.

    I am also glad to learn that the physical carnage will be improved upon as well over Motorstorm. Maybe the marketers can put that on the back of the box “New and Improved Carnage” :D

    My anticipation for Motorstorm Pacific Rift has been fueled back up again, thanks for keeping us informed!!

  • @30 FritoZ
    Dont worry, what happened was that the demo was an old build, without the polish and fx.
    (Just like R2 private Beta)

  • Great post, thanks for the update on the photo mode. Not that you care, but I didn’t buy Motorstorm but I will definitely be buying Motorstorm 2!

    “crashing is also mutually exclusive to winning.” – well put and you’ve captured the only reason my wife likes racing games. Hopefully she’ll think it’s more fun to win a few – but most likely, she’ll have the most fun with the crashes again. Why can’t she get past the first level?

  • @23 I’m pretty sure Motorstorm Pacific Rift will have Motion Steering, as all the preview information of the game on the ‘net indicates so. Also, as you said, it was in Motorstorm. The demo for Motorstorm Pacific Rift actually has it stated in the controller command diagram loading screen that there is a tilt feature but it just wasn’t built into the demo gameplay itself. Sort of like the photo mode wasn’t, but will be in the full retail version of the game.

  • Netweb is OUT!

    Reason: Fly To Paradise!

  • Did you ever consider both options?

  • Wow, really alot of nice games coming out in the next few months. I probably make alot more than the most of you here, but even i’ll be tight on the financials.

  • hi jeff
    my heart and soul was with you guys in orlando
    so can you sen me a LBP Beta code :D

  • Option 1 – Every time you crash in MotorStorm one of our army of in-house vivisectionists ritually sacrifices a cute kitten to punish MotorStorm players and make sure they learn that crashing will only lead to kitty Armageddon.

    You guys are sick :|

  • Cool another game with photo mode! Let’s hope it’s as well implemented as the brilliant one in WipeOut!

    I like being able to pause the action and have a close at the detailed level design, is this going to become a standard feature on PS3 games?

    I hope they add it to Resistance 2 and KillZone 2 as well, in a similar way to how Halo 3 allowed you to fly around the map in it’s screenshot/movie mode.

  • @34 – nmc75

    I hope you’re right about the motion steering, as I am a Qore subscriber and got the demo via Qore.

    From what I saw on that demo, there wasn’t any motion steering (tilt, yes, but no motion steering).

    Hope that the full edition will solve this problem and if not, a future update to include both the stick and the Motion steering, with the option to chose either.

  • The crashes are cool. But what I like and what I love doing most in video games is BLOW SH** UP. Big expolsions !!!! :-) M2+R2=locked in room for days!! This is going to be the bigest holday season sony has ever seen!!!!! And at lest it is not a boring RPG @1 Trolls got to love them :-)

  • Motorstorm was my first PS3 game and I still play it. I love the game and can’t wait for Motorstorm 2. I’ll have to put off bioshock a month so I can get motorstorm and little big planet in october.

  • I am sorry you feel this way about your game and the community that plays it. You never had to call a manager over or tell others after a bad meal? Same damn thing.

  • Day one purchase, I can drive a dump truck? Im so there.

  • On I’m glad u guyz decided not to sacrifice teh kittonz. >:|

  • SLIPKNOT!!! love the choice of music for this trailer

  • That post just delayed Canada PSN video store another 3 months^ :P

  • Great recape!

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