Maybe it’s karma. A game whose release was delayed first by the February earthquake in New Zealand, and then by the March earthquake in Japan, takes place in a city being torn apart by an earthquake.
But perhaps a worse fate than a setting made distateful by current events is a curious absence of fun. “MotorStorm: Apocalypse” draws you in at first as you gun your dune buggy across collapsing bridges and dodge tumbling skyscrapers, but it doesn’t take long for you to realize that the game’s sound and fury signifies … not nothing, but not much.
The game’s lack of lasting appeal is a genuine mystery when you consider its scenario, which would seem to be the fulfillment of every eighth-grade male’s dearest fantasy: In a seaside metropolis buckling amid a series of temblors, security forces battle homocidal maniacs who refuse to evacuate. On the coast appears an aircraft carrier full of daredevils who invade the disaster area to set up an event that’s part race, part heavy metal concert, part riot, and part hand-to-hand combat with vehicles standing in for fists. Motorized carriages from dirtbikes to monster trucks share the track, ramming each other into wrecked cityscape, as crazed denizens throw molotov cocktails at helicopters, helicopters respond with machine gun barrages, and both groups do their worst to you.
| ‘MotorStorm: Apocalypse’ |
| » System: PS3 |
| » Price: $59.99 |
| » Rating: 2 out of 5 stars |
Why isn’t this cross between “Road Rash” and “Destruction Derby” a great game?
Perhaps because, as much as “Apocalypse” salutes that pair of classics, its true inspiration is “Excitebike.” That Nintendo Entertainment System racer was a kind of video game version of that game where you throw coins, trying to see who gets closest to a wall without touching it. You were tasked with holding down the accelerator, but not so much that your engine overheats, and striking this balance was everything.
Similarly, in “Apocalypse,” you spend the majority of your time ignoring the spectacle surrounding your vehicle so you can stare at a meter in the corner of the screen showing how close your engine is to overheating. In a nice touch, your car explodes when it gets too hot, and there are pools of water and sections of burning wreckage all over the place that affect the temperature guage, but this core gimmick is simply too shallow to sustain a modern game.
It wouldn’t be so bad if you had more contact with other cars. For a game supposedly revolving around vehicular combat, “Apocalypse” is awfully lonely. The courses are so fractured with jumps and secret shortcuts that you can go a while between even seeing another racer, so no matter what place you end up getting, your reaction is “Really?”
“Apocalypse” packs undeniable thrills, but a game’s first duty is to its core mechanic, and “Apocalypse’s” racing just isn’t interesting.
