PURE Review: Short, sweet and frantic.

A plethora of dirt, tricks and customizable

options to keep you playing till the end.

By GrathiusXR

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:

BlackRock Studios, the studio formerly known as Climax Racing, are best known for the plethora of ATV games developed for the original Xbox and PS2. Now they have entered the next gen with their latest entry, PURE. This latest ATV game is an adrenaline pumping, trick popping and high flying ATV game that has plenty fun to offer.

Pure isn’t about the story, the girl, nor the money, it’s just about the racing and winning. When you start up the first thing that happens is you are taken through a quick tutorial to get you up to speed with the controls in PURE. It’s short, informative, and gets the job done.

From then on the racing begins. Select your character from a list where each one has different special tricks and regular tricks, then you’re off. In total there are 10 stages in the PURE world tour with the first stage only having 3 events to start off with and with the later events having a few more added. Race, Sprint and Freestyle are the 3 game modes available in PURE and are the bulk of each stage in the world tour.

Race of course is your standard 3 laps around the track and first place is the winner, Sprint is a 5 lap race around a small track that takes around 30 seconds to a minute to complete a lap, and Freestyle which I have to say is the savior of this game is the best out of the 3.

The objective of Freestyle is to basically have the most points before your bike runs out of fuel. Once you run out of fuel it’s game over. This game mode is fast, crazy and a hella-of-a-lot-a-fun. To replenish your fuel you can either drive through greens icons that replenish it or do massive tricks that score big points to replenish a little fuel.

Also complete a lap and a portion of fuel is replenished as well. Others icons such as maximum boost are available, x2 which will double your score after your jump and also helps in getting big points with huge combos, and star power which enables you to do your special trick at the next big jump.

Repeat the same trick and it will be branded as “Stale”, or “Tame” and barely any points will be awarded or fuel in that case as well. This system will guarantee you keep doing fresh tricks at each jumps to gain max points and build up your combo meter.

Now as much fun as Freestyle is, after a while it does become a bore as with Race and Sprint, and it makes you wonder why there’s only 3 game modes where there could of been so much more. Once you complete World Tour there’s not much to do as multi-player isn’t that great.

But if you haven’t completed World Tour, don’t really bother with multiplayer that much. Because everyone will have A Class ATVs while you will be stuck with a C Class or B Class that is way slower than theirs. Even though this can be overcome with the Force Class option, their bike is still to fast so really there’s no point.

Apart from the lack of game modes that disappoint, the customization features of PURE, while done very well, also falls short. It gets the job done, I will say that, but it isn’t deep like Forza 2′s customization. Every part looks the same with a few minor differences. No one part makes that much of a difference and the cosmetics of the actual ATV while looking different are a bit of a waste.

Whilst racing all you see is your character and the side of your ATV so the cosmetics of it are a waste. They are all pretty simple with a few different looking lights, grills, and side skirts. It almost makes you again feel that there could of been so much more Black Rock Studios could of done to make the customization so much better but didn’t really bother.

Apart from these problems with the game, the scenery is nothing short of breathtaking. Racing in places such as New Zealand and Italy to name just a few, have draw distances that are simply amazing. Dirt that splashes onto your ATV and racer and lighting that makes the levels really stand out.

Character models are great. Movement during tricks are fluid and smooth. The environment is of the highest caliber and I’m amazed at just how well the game holds up with 15 other racers on the screen at once. The soundtrack, which features artists such as Pendulum, Wolfmother and The Subways, offers great variety with genres such as Rock, Electronica and House that suits the atmosphere of PURE.

PURE, whilst fun and great if your looking for something different, only offers a length of 7 hours at max Most races can be done with your first go and are never really challenging at all. Once your done with PURE World Tour your basically done with the game.

Multiplayer offers the same stuff with the exception of talking to the people your racing with, and whilst the levels are breathtaking and amazing to look at you race the same track at least 5 times through out the world tour, and you get sick of it after the 2nd time.

As I said if your looking for something different amongst the fps games and RPG games, PURE is a racer that will offer you great fun, breathtaking environments, crazy tricks and some easy achievement points for those of you out there, but only for a short period of time. If you can pick it up cheap do so, don’t pay full price for it because you will be disappointed.

©2008 Arthur Kotsopoulos:

“7.5/10

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Filed under: Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | ATV, Black Rock Studios, blackrock studios, Climax Racing, DIsney Interactive Studios, disney studios, PURE, Pure review