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Good: Variety of vehicles, visuals, online play

Bad: Load times, menu system, limited number of tracks,

Besides the notorious fake Killzone trailer, the presentation that caused the most buzz at Sony's 2005 E3 booth was certainly Motorstorm. It featured the same "no way can that be gameplay footage" reaction from those in attendance and watching via the internet. Well:it turns out that it wasn't gameplay footage. Like most of what we saw that year, it was purely CG. Now that the retail version is out, we can make some true judgments about Sony's new racer.

You won't find any clean courses or urban environments in Motorstorm. It's all set in Monument Valley, a rocky, red pile of terrain that happens to be an extremely dangerous racing locale. You won't get to see too much of it however, as the game features less than 10 courses. Not only that, but you can't just jump in and pick a course to race. You have to go into the main career mode no matter what, which means you have to surf through the poorly-designed "ticket" system to find what you're looking for. I can't imagine it would be too hard to program a simple Quick Race option that allows you to select your track and preferred vehicle, but there's none to be found.

The Playstation 3 is a ridiculously powerful machine, but you wouldn't know that based on Motorstorm's load times. I'm not even talking about loading races this game takes a long time just to scroll through the available cars. I usually just ended up picking the first car it presented me rather than suffer through the load times to look at another one.

Menus and load times may be an issue with the title, but the actual racing gameplay is pretty solid. There's nothing fancy about it, as you're pretty much just boosting, braking, and trying to stay alive. Burnout may feature more white-knuckle moments and a true sense of speed, but Motorstorm certainly has its share of incredible moments. Some crashes are massive, with bodies and metal flying everywhere.

Each vehicle class behaves in a completely different fashion than the next. If you want to go the low-risk route through muddy trenches, a semi truck or other big vehicle will do nicely. If you'd like to flirt with death a little more, you're free to ramp across valleys with a motorcycle or ATV. I personally preferred the ATVs and Mudpluggers more than any of the other vehicles, although the former tends to crash a bit too much.

It may not match the falsified beauty of the E3 2005 trailer, but it comes damn close. For a game this early in the PS3's lifecycle, Motorstorm looks beautiful. Textures are realistic, the draw distance is deep, and the vehicles themselves show a great amount of wear and tear as the race goes on. The only serious drawback is the occasional framerate drop when there's just too much happening onscreen.

The engine sound effects are pretty much par for the course, but the soundtrack is somewhat impressive. Most racing games go straight for the Papa Roach/Nickelback/whatever crap band is in the Top 40 route with their soundtrack, but Motorstorm manages to throw in some solid tracks from Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age, and Kings of Leon. Unfortunately, it also features Slipknot.

Motorstorm is a good racing experience that gets dragged down by an awful menu system and some cumbersome load times. Online play is great, but it's not enough to make up for the disappointing single-player experience.

Graphics: 9.0

Sound: 8.5

First Play: 9.0

Replay Value: 6.5

Gameplay: 8.0

Overall: 8.0