Pure

So I got this game a few days ago and have been thrashing on it for quite a few hours now, and my impressions of it are very good indeed. The first thing that struck me about the game was that it was completely undemanding, and yet challenging, leaving you with a deep satisfaction - mainly due to the fact that the game is just fun. Fun in the pure meaning of the word. It's one of those games you can just pick up and play for half an hour and just have fun. However, there's also this other aspect to the game which will draw you in over time. An aspect that's very in-depth and logical.

The main part of the game is the world tour allowing you to go all over the world to different countries ranging from Italy to America to New Zealand - over all sorts of different terrains - from grass, to mud, to sand, concrete and more. This mode has you going from track to track simultaneously within the engine category - be it the begining D class engines, slwly building up the extremely fast A and S class engines. As it is, the game slowly gets more and more challenging as you move higher up the ranks and higher up the engine categorys. Before you can start your world tour, you have to create your vehicle. This is no simple creation ranging from a few choice parts and putting them together. The entire bike can be changed and modified ranging from the suspension, bars, wheels, tires, hubs, fans, rests, seat, design, aesthetic cosmetics and everything else. The whole bike has to be made from scratch. On the initial start-up your choice is limited to what you can have - all the different pieces have different effects on how your vehicle performs in the different areas - whether it's tricks, handling, boost, speed, acceleration, etc. As you make your way through the world tour, you unlock even more parts for the vehicle creations and open up new garage slots allowing you to make more and more bikes to fit your personal style of play. When all the pieces are garnered together, there are over 60,000 different possibilities for bikes to make - leaving you with all sorts of different choices.

The gameplay is pretty simple, but not so simple so as to make the game get boring. The handling feels right, and of course your different aspects created on your bike make a big difference to how it works. Similar to SSX from the Playstation 2, you drive around do tricks, land them and get boost. Boost allows you to drive super fast on straights, and getting more boost allows you to do super tricks. The different modes such as freestyle allow you to go around the track over and over again until your fuel levels run out trying to get as many points as possible from doing the tricks. This is all relative, and makes the game extremely fun and something you won't get bored of easily as the number of different trick combinations amount into the thousands. The replay value is also there, getting your times better and better on each track, trying to finish higher than you previously did - and the 100 player online mode is going to be unreal. Tournaments online driving along dirt tracks on all terrain vehicles just seems outrageously fun to me - and the game is.

Really, I can't find any flaws with it at all. The graphics are some of the best yet - with huge ranges of landscape looking over beautiful countryside and vast moutainous regions as you jump hundreds of feet in the air over cliff edges doing absurd tricks. The gameplay is challenging but fun, and the whole thing just feels right. I can't recommend this game highly enough.

"Pure" is an ATV-racing game, but it is not a simulator, as you can perform stunts in the game that would be either stupidly dangerous or impossible in real life (hence the warning when you first load the game not to imitate the tricks depicted within).

Before you race you must go to the Garage and use one of the available ATV slots (you can unlock more in the World Tour mode as you progress) to build a vehicle from the ground up using various parts. Different combinations and parts will affect things such as handling, speed, acceleration and how adept the ATV is at performing tricks, whereas other parts (such as the style of handlebars or even the shape, colour and motifs on the ATV) are purely cosmetic. You can either design an ATV part by part manually, or you can do a Quick Race or Quick Freestyle design where the console picks a part for you depending on the discipline you are designing for. You can amend your designs at any point between races, so if you unlock new parts or different upgrades then you can apply them to any ATV by visiting the Garage.

There are three race disciplines in "Pure": Race, Sprint and Freestyle. In Race mode you simply race against opponents while making the most of jumps to perform tricks to fill up the Thrill Bar on the right. To do a trick you simply press A (or B or Y once the Thrill Bar is high enough) together with any direction on the Left Stick, and you can preload a jump by holding down on the Left Stick then pressing up just as you leave the ground; this will give you more height, and thus more time to perform tricks. You can also use the X button to give your ATV a speed boost, although doing so depletes your Thrill Bar. You also lose some of your Thrill Bar every time you crash.

As well as the A, B and Y tricks, if you completely fill up the Thrill Bar you can perform a Special Trick by boosting just before a big jump (many of these jumps have twin torches either side of the apex of the hill from which you jump), preloading and, when airborne, pressing both bumpers together with any direction on the Left Stick. This will completely fill your Thrill Bar again if you successfully do the stunt and land without hitting the ground in mid-trick.

In Sprint mode it's similar to Race, only the tracks are much shorter and jumps you can use to boost your Thrill Bar are few and far between.

In Freestyle your position compared to your opponents is decided, not by your relative position to them on the course, but by what score you can accumulate by doing as many tricks as possible. The more complicated tricks are worth more points, and you must keep doing tricks to avoid losing fuel more quickly (Freestyle is the only discipline in which fuel needs to be taken into account). There are various icons scattered around the track: some will double your score for tricks you do within a short time of driving into the icon, some give you more fuel, others allow you to instantly access a special trick, and another allows you to immediately increase your Thrill Bar to the next available jump style (e.g. if you only had A accessible before you picked this up, it would take your Thrill Bar to B). If your fuel depletes completely the race is over and the person with the highest score wins the event.

"Pure" is an incredibly exciting and fun game to play. The graphics and sound are absolutely sumptuous (notice how your character gets muddy as you ride through the mud sections!), and you really get some good views when you shoot off the apex of a big jump as you hear the air whistle. The game plays really well, too, although sometimes the stick control is not always as precise as you would like it to be when doing stunts (you don't get as much boost if you inadvertently duplicate a trick).

Other gripes with the game include the track occasionally being hard to follow (there's no on-screen map of the track), either by it being too dark because it's in the shade from the sun, or through what looks like a jump actually being a mountain. Another thing that is a shame is that the game has no offline multiplayer mode, which is a shame as a two-player split-screen would have been a lot of fun.

Online you can race against up to fifteen other players in either Race, Sprint or Freestyle events. This mode is every bit as enjoyable as the offline equivalents, although I would recommend that you play the World Tour for long enough to unlock later engine classes such as A or B before taking it too seriously or you will be left standing if you're only at engine class D (the first and only one available to you when you start playing)! (There is an Achievement that you will unlock if you somehow defeat a class-A opponent with a class-D ATV, though!).

What "Pure" does, it does very well, and is different enough to help it stand out from other, more run-of-the-mill driving games.

Pure is brilliant fun. Load times are short. Graphically it's superb and there are no noticeable framerate issues or glitches. There's some banging music too!

The game begins with the same introduction as the demo, where you have to do a lap, perform a trick, boost and so on. Once you've completed that (which you only do once of course, not every time like in the demo!) you're taken to the main menu. Getting started is a breeze. There are tons of customisation options for building a vehicle, or you can just hold down either X or Y to automatically build either a speed racer or a trick racer. It's a great option for people who can't be bothered selecting individual components, but the depth is still there for those that want it.

The trick system is more complex than I first imagined, as you not only build up juice to activate the X and Y button tricks, but you can also use either shoulder button as well to do variations. Tap the analogue stick either up or down twice and you'll do a full somersault. I think they got the balance just right between tricks and boosting. It sounds cliched to say it, but Pure really is one of those games that's easy to pick up and play, but hard to master.

There are a few game modes. I got to try the world tour mode, where you race against the AI opponents, unlocking more tracks, vehicle parts and events as you go. That was great fun. I tried another mode (can't remember the name) where I was driving around the course trying to string together as many tricks as possible to build up points. That was good fun. I didn't get to try the online play, but I believe you can have up to 16 people racing at the same time.

There is plenty of content here - lots of tracks, several riders to choose from, a whole host of customisation options for vehicles. It'll certainly keep you busy for a while trying to unlock all of the achievements.

Negatives? It's a shame there's no split screen local multiplayer, and sometimes the courses can be a little unforgiving causing your rider to fall off just for straying a little too far to the left or right of the track. These really are minor complaints though.

Overall, if you're a fan of arcade style racers, or maybe the SSX games, I think you'll enjoy this a lot. I can't wait to try it online!