MotorStorm: Apocalypse is cursed. It was set to release right around the time of the devastating 2011 Japanese tsunami. Due to the natural disaster content of the game the release date was changed in some parts of the world and advertising was pulled. Then the 2011 PSN outage struck. Then it turned out that MotorStorm: Apocalypse is a kind of serious regression from both the original MotorStorm and Pacific Rift and they made some less than ideal changes too. It is all spectacle and not much substance. Then it went on to end up being the last proper MotorStorm ever made. It is easily my least favourite MotorStorm although I do have MotorStorm: RC up next to revisit so that might change. At least it looks cool during races though and there is still a solid bit of fun to be had here.

Did this have a lower budget than the first two PS3 MotorStorm games? Was it just a case of awesome concept on paper but poor in reality or in execution? What happened here and where do I begin? I guess I’ll start at the very core; the vehicle handling and physics. Things have been seriously simplified from Pacific Rift which was already a downgrade on the first game but at least I kind of understand why. I think it may have been necessary due to the extreme nature of this game. You’re going to be driving over collapsing surfaces, torn apart city streets, through burning debris and on top of buildings while a lot of crazy stuff is going on. The vehicles have so much grip that they feel stuck to the road, like there is some strange level of down force and they lack weight too. Vehicles will mostly roll over damaged surfaces with pretty much no trouble or barely any feedback and only just a hint of rumble from the controller. But then things can pretty often feel awkward and wonky with these physics too, especially on the bikes. Handling feels simplistic with steering sometimes being too reactive and the brakes are strong enough to have you often not worrying about how fast you’re approaching a corner. It’s not grounded at all and the physics don’t sell the vehicles you’re in or the environments you are driving through. It has been pushed hard in a very simple arcadey direction and feels shallow but this was probably vital to avoid nonstop crashes and relentlessly being thrown around. This does make vehicles quite a bit less interesting and enjoyable to drive than in any other MotorStorm. Although there are some nice things like some of the vehicles, particularly the muscle cars, are satisfying to slide a bit and they added simple stunts for the bikes.

So the difficulty of MotorStorm: Apocalypse comes mostly from the destruction, the debris, the dust clouds, the distractions and the environments. You constantly need to dodge stuff, watch what is happening ahead and adapt while also dealing with the other vehicles on track that are in your way and that like to ram you. This game is called MotorStorm: Apocalypse because it is set in a city being torn to pieces by an enormous earthquake and intense weather while there is also some kind of war going on between street gangs and a private security firm. There is a persistent barrage of over the top carnage that is actually stupidly impressive and it is the highlight of the game. It is amazing that it runs on the PS3 without the frame rate falling off a cliff or the console just bursting into flames. Buildings collapse, streets break apart, trains zip past and then spectacularly derail, helicopters and jets are in the air shooting, dudes are out on the street with Molotov’s, bridges buckle and bend, new paths open ahead and old paths get destroyed, there’s excessive rain, wind and storms, dust gets kicked up, there are fires everywhere and there is so much debris littering the tracks. I can’t put something like this into words. You need to see it in action. It is impressive, surprising and fun. Sadly though it is also frustrating, annoying and it gets old kind of quickly and that’s not good when this whole games thing is the spectacle and how it impacts racing.

Eventually all the craziness going on starts to feel stale and becomes background noise. The constant shit in front of what you need to see, combined with the amount of shit on the road, and the shit you have to put up with from other vehicles, is just too much shit. You’ll constantly miss something, constantly hit things or be pushed into them and constantly have things change right in front of you. Yet even in the less chaotic moments track readability still isn’t the best even though the developers did use red flares and big yellow arrow signs to help. The game constantly irks you and even if you learn the tracks and what’s going to happen well enough to reduce this then you’re still left with these physics, the handling and underwhelming track design. There’s more than that too. The boost feels nerfed. It feels less intense, has a shorter meter and doesn’t need the same level of management. At least they added air cooling during jumps though. The vehicles feel more samey this time around and the need for picking the right path for the right vehicle has been pulled back on a lot. I’m not sure that building a racing game completely around spectacle was a good idea or at least in this case it wasn’t worth it. Everything had to accommodate for it and everything was designed and tuned for it which has resulted in a really compromised racing game and MotorStorm experience, if this even is still MotorStorm. It has some of the spirit and style of, and things in common with, MotorStorm but this doesn’t really feel like MotorStorm. That wouldn’t really be much of a problem if this was an exceptional racing game with a wealth of content but it is not.

MotorStorm: Apocalypse is shorter than MotorStorm: Pacific Rift with less content and worse content and it has a greater online and multiplayer focus. The main mode of MotorStorm: Apocalypse is the Festival which is broken into three difficulties. You play as a different character in each difficulty because this game has a story for some reason. Why did they do this and why is it like this? There are cut scenes in-between races. Just what I wanted; nonsense cut scenes before a race and that is what this whole story is, nonsense. It’s garbage, the stilted graphic novel style scenes look garbage, characters, dialogue – all garbage. To be fair though sometimes it is so stupid that it swings around to being likeable and funny for a moment and maybe it isn’t as bad as how short this main mode is. There are collectable cards to be found out on tracks which do encourage exploring and learning the courses but there are 150 of them and I don’t like this game enough to care. The soundtrack, while not bad, is a huge step down from previous titles but the sound effects from all the destruction is good at least.

The other options, that are found in Wreckreation, are quick race, a mode editor (freeplay), time attack and splitscreen multiplayer. The main other single player mode is the Hardcore Festival. This mode has all the problems of MotorStorm: Apocalypse I already went through only now at the hardest difficulty plus tight target times, so good luck with that and it also is just a repeat of what you already did. I finished five of these races and then quit. The trophy for completing this mode has an extremely low completion rate so it seems like 99% of people decided they didn’t need that frustration in their life too. The other main offerings were the online multiplayer, weekly challenges and downloadable events. The online multiplayer was expanded here with perks, medals, progress, betting and had unlocks tied to it. I remember having some fun playing online back when I first played this game which was about five years ago right? Yeah, the late PS3 era was only about five years ago.

I have been pretty harsh here but I do kind of like this game and it is still an enjoyable game, mainly for casual short bursts. It easily has the best vehicle customisation in the series and they added some new vehicles to the mix such as supercars, choppers and supperminis. The MotorStorm style and attitude return again in the manual and case too. I think if you had no knowledge of or expectations for MotorStorm you would probably enjoy this a bit more than me and come away with a more positive opinion on it. Despite my criticisms and score MotorStorm: Apocalypse is still over the top, impressive and fun. I would still recommend this to every arcade racing game fan with a PlayStation 3.

6.8/10