Pure

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Holy shit! 10 days without a blog, and I don’t have a legitimate excuse for it? That’s weird. To tell you the truth, I just haven’t been up to the task of creating a blog. Takes too long, I guess.

Well, anyway, I’m finally here with another blog about irrelevant stuff about my life that you actually take the time to read (only God knows why). So without further ado, let’s get on with it!

42” Sony Bravia + 5.1 Dolby + Battlefield: Bad Company = me smiling from ear to ear. Seriously, once you have played a game like Battlefield: Bad Company on a setup like that, you can’t go back to a regular setup – it’s that good! When you’re home alone, like I was yesterday, and you live in the middle of fucking nowhere, crank that volume up and embrace the Dolby. Although, once your ears are bleeding you should probably stop.

I have also come to the conclusion that I need to sell a kidney or some other body part in order to afford all the games that are coming out. Here’s just a quick list of the games I want:

1. Mortal Kombat vs. DC - One of the few MK games that actually has the potential to be awesome
2. FIFA ’09 - I loved FIFA 08 and this looks like an improvement in every way.
3. LittleBigPlanet - Highly customisable and fucking cute; what else is there to say?
4. Guitar Hero: World Tour (if it’s out in this year, that is) - What can I say? I'm a major rhythm game nut, and this one looks great.
5. Call of Duty: World at War - I'm one of the few people that actually like World War 2-themed games.
6. Saints Row 2 - Looks like a shitload of fun compared to the serious GTAIV.
7. Far Cry 2 - This one is a maybe right now.
8. Motorstorm: Pacific Rift - I loved the first one, and with more tracks and splitscreen, it's already better than the original.
9. Resistance 2 - Come on, you knew this was going to be on. ;)
10. Mirror’s Edge - Highly original and with great potential. It could go either way for it right now.
11. Need for Speed: Undercover - FIVE GRAND.
12. Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway - Again, killing Nazi's = awesome!
13. Pure - Played the demo and loved it.

That’s $1500 dollars in games alone! And if I’m also getting a TV… I am so screwed.

It’s tough being a broke gamer right now.

PURE REVIEW (XBOX 360)

ATV'S + SSX TRICKY = BRILLIANT MINDLESS SPEED FUN!

Both stunning and downright fun!

 
The trick system on offer in PURE is great, but what's also a nice addition is the fact that the game will punish you for using the same old tricks again and again, this feature as been seen in more recent games but it's still a feature that feels more useful in PURE then any game yet. It's simple, perform one of the same trick to many times and you'll get less juice to use as boost on your ATV. This requires you to be more varied in your ATV trick moves and opens up much of the games hidden depth. It's also nice that you honestly feel gratification at hitting those much tougher moves and eventually landing perfectly. It's a system that can indeed be very rewarding especially if you take the time to master it. It will surely be helpful when you go online.

LOOK AT ALL THAT BEAUTIFUL MUD!

It's quite obvious that PURE is a great looking game, it's one of the best looking games on this current generation of consoles. Now that might sound a little mad to some of you reading this, but the overall presentation of PURE is great and most important of all. It run's great which is important for a game of this nature. Be it the stunning landscapes or the fantastic moments at the start of a race when all 16 ATV Rider's jump the first big jump and do their tricks, PURE looks great over the whole experience. Much like Motorstorm, the game also features a varied track deformation effect such as tire tracks through mud, dirt or dust. The deformation isn't as deep or impacting as the one found in Motorstorm, it won't affect your ATV's handling to much or cause any serious driving problems, but mud is still mud and you'lll see your ATV slide against the mud in quite impressive style. What's also nice is that mud will splatter upon your rider's cloths and ATV and will stay there all throughout the actual race.

PURE features a large number of different surfaces that will offer different driving issues and offer different interesting graphical affects. For example the white dust is easy enough to drive but leaves a white powder over your rider and ATV, there small but great details that help PURE come alive. But PURE is more arcade based then anything so it's clear Black Rock didn't want to make the games many varied surfaces have a huge affect on the actual gameplay. But it's small details like that, that I often notice and enjoy seeing in the newest generation of Video games. So it's nice to see this in PURE.

GET BUILDING BOY, WE HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY!

Another great hidden depth to PURE is in it's ATV Garage mode which allows you to build a great number of personally customized ATV's for your own use both offline and online. The garage mode might seem like a poor add-on at first sight but as you play along you'll realise you'll have to mess around with your ATV's to get the best ATV to win that freestyle or race stage you just can't seem to win. ATV's will either come in two main forms. Race or Freestyle, in Race you'll be building a vehicle around speed and handling while in Freestyle it's all about the tricks, so it's important to build an ATV that as a good engine and good suspension. You can of course to a quick build which will see the game build you a quick ATV for use rather then you spending the time to build an ATV one part at a time. But honestly spending the time to build your own means you can create the ATV to use around your best or worse abilities in PURE. For example, good at driving your ATV to the limit? then why not make sure you have the acceleration and max speed you want at the cost of the ATV's handling. Or do you find your falling off your ATV one time to many when performing tricks? then why not make sure your ATV is suited to handle the landing pressure of high flying tricks. It may sound simple but there is great depth and honest interest to be found in PURE's garage mode and with the great variation of ATV's to build. You'll defiantly be able to build a unique looking and peforming ATV for online play.

In the later stages having the right ATV becomes much more important, at first you'll build any and it'll probably do the job just fine but later on in the World tour you'll need to build an ATV around your style of play or depending on what type of mode your racing. It's best to have at least one of each race class avaliable, so have a specially made freestyle ATV or a Race ATV build around in your garage at all times. This is because despite a good few questionable odd A.I moments, the overall A.I is good and can be a real tough challenge if your not up to your game or lack the right type of ATV. But there not super humans, they will often make mistakes like yourself which sees them flying across the tracks leaving their ATV moving right into your path of direction or they might get a turning wrong and lose a place in the race. The A.I works well without being to punishing, though you will hit a wall where you'll have to start using your ATV building mind to build an ATV best suited to your abilities to beat them. This may be an area of PURE that will frustrate some, but the quick build should also do a fine job at making sure you have the ATV for the job. Though as I have already stated, sometimes it's best to build a ATV part by part around your style of play if you want the best results.

FOUR WHEELS, ONLINE AND OFFLINE!

PURE features the expected offline and online modes as you'd expect with any racing game nowadays. The single player campaign is very much a case of 'haven't we seen this before' with it's Tour Mode which sees you enter different competitions which include around five stages of any of the three game modes featured in PURE. These are Race, Sprint and Freestyle. Race is as you'd expect to be honest, a race of a number of laps with the first to come through the winning flag being the winner of the race. Simple and we have seen it all before. Sprint is very much the same style of mode but based on much smaller tracks and finally freestyle, which is the most interesting of the games modes. In freestyle you perform tricks to both get a score and fuel for your ATV. You need to get the most out of your tricks and much of the skill found in freestyle is mastering the many tricks avaliable. You won't get far using the same trick again and again, you can also obtain extras usually found at jumps which will help you in these modes. These includes the ability to freeze your petrol bar and the ever useful special trick ability which allows you to perform a special trick without needing to spend the time filling up your juice bar. Freestyle is the most interesting of the modes, but can feel a little frustrating at times, especially if your ATV isn't suited for the job. 

LET'S GET TRICKY!! Now if this only had the Run DMC Music!

PURE also features a very solid Online component that when you consider features 16 real players from around the world, runs better then you'd expect. In my experience of racing games I have found few games that run perfectly online and PURE is often no different. But I have also had some lag free races that have been a hell of a lot of fun. You can tell your racing against actual players rather then the games A.I as they'll sometimes race dirty or try a trick to many and crash in an honestly painful way and simply make normal human errors. All three of PURE's game modes feature online aswell with Freestyle being the most fun much like it is in the games Tour Mode. The game features time leaderboards which allows you to check your lap times and such against PURE players from around this tricky loving world of ours. The online mechanic will be a little hit or miss with some, is the lag sometimes really worth that extra real ATV riding moments? great credit goes to the games A.I which will offer you enough challenge to keep you interested in the single player component if online racing isn't your thing 

The game also features a quick race mode where you can simply select a single race mode and race on any of the tracks you have unlocked, you of course unlock these tracks through the games Tour Mode. You also unlock character costumes, ATV Parts and tricks through the games Tour Mode so it's very much the meat to the overall experience and despite it being a mode we have seen all before in games such as the classic Burnout games (before Paradise) and most of the racing games on offer today. It's still a mode that will last you a good few hours if not more depending on your skill and how much time you spend in the games Garage mode. The games surprising depth is there if you wish to use it, if not then the game allows you to get along without even making an ATV part by part despite it offering a much tougher path later along in Tour Mode. 

PURE FUN TO BE FOUND THROUGHOUT THIS PACKAGE!

Reviewed by Joseph Bayliss (TrueEnglishGent)

Art and Wonder!

The Treyarch version, I guess.

• Beenox (Wii, Windows)
• Eurocom (PlayStation 2)
• Treyarch (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)
• Vicarious Visions (Nintendo DS)

• Gears of War 2*
• James Bond: Quantum of Solace
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles
• Saints Row 2*
• Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
• Tomb Raider: Underworld*
• WWE SmackDown vs. RAW 2009*