Pure: The Official Geekscape Review
Remember in Cruisin’ USA and Cruisin World when you would go so fast that you would make jumps? Why did that matter and why were we so exhilarated when it happened? It made our hearts tingle because of how real the car felt. It wasn’t Mario Kart, and it wasn’t anything too over the top – it was you, in a car, racing and feeling like you were doing it (at least that’s how I justify all the quarters I spent on that game as a child). Pure takes this to quite a few next levels with its handling, gameplay, and the way that Disney Interactive decided to make this game largely strategy based during racing makes it all the more exciting. I’m not much of a racer, but this game will have you swearing when you either miss or land your first high jump to the empty room – more on the empty room later.
Pure is one of the first games by new publisher Disney Interactive and it looks absolutely amazing and feels just about perfect. It is an ATV racer that takes you off-roading all over the world. It gives you the option of racing in a Single race or to be part of the World Tour. The World Tour consists of 10 levels, each with at last 4 different racing experiences in them. In Sprint mode, you are basically just hauling ass until the race comes to a halt in a competition (in the default difficulty setting) that will challenge even the most avid racing gamer.
The clean view of everything around you, the depth of the backgrounds and the sky, and the clear and impressive way even the most highly customized ATV looks during the introductory scenes of every race give this game little to accomplish beyond its looks. The game looks so good that you’re pretty much already have a great time by the time the race starts.
You are revving your engine, getting ready for the ride of your life, and then you start out – The ATV feels amazing. It feels like it might if you were riding one of these. The weight, the acceleration, the speeds you reach (which are never too over the top unless you are using your nitrous), are all quasi-realistic. When riding through the tracks, pre-loading before a jump, and landing one you thought you wouldn’t, you have a sense of danger. You don’t want to fall in this game, and not just because you might fall behind. The way the gameplay is setup makes you care about the well-being of you character, and that is one of the most important parts of any video game. How is this care established? The Thrill Meter.
There is a Thrill Meter at the bottom of the screen that fills up a little every time you land a jump. It goes back down every time you fall or face the wrong direction or get lost. This Thrill Meter fills up when you land a jump, but diminishes every time you use the built-in nitrous boosters. The boosters are a key part of the racing experience in that they are the difference between winning and losing a match. This means the Thrill Meter makes you decide what you want, to pull off awesome tricks (the more juice you have in the meter, the “sicker” the jumps you can pull off), or to win the race. This strategy balances the game out amazingly, and basically means that you cannot just race – you’ve gotta get your balls ready for some crazy effing jumps.
The jumps in this game are what make it an action-packed thrill ride. That’s right. They preserve a sense of tension, because you may not land most of them until you are seasoned in playing the game. So even on the long stretches of flat dirt (which are really not too common) you are keeping your eye on the hillside to gauge the size of the next jump that could either make or break your place in the race.
The game really keeps the action going by not letting you get lost, get stuck, or go in the wrong direction too often. It places you back before the jump you missed if you miss a jump (which puts you farther back in the race), or it turns you around and puts you in the right direction very quickly without you doing a thing. The way it is handled caters to making the action and speed of this game inevitably fast.
The incentive for winning, also, is not just your own pride/sense of accomplishment, or the promise of a “trophy” of some kind – it is upgrades to your ATV. Your ATV is your baby in this game. It is your life and death and you have to constantly upgrade it, modify it, paint it however your mood changes. The ATV’s are customizable almost to a fault. I know absolutely nothing about ATV’s and went through the ~30 part process of building my own in the game from scratch. I built it based on the attributes provided to me by the meter giving stats on “Speed, Acceleration, Tricks, etc.” It got to the point where I didn’t really care about things like handle bars and my seat (of which there are two initial choices which really don’t look all that different to me), but I went ahead and chose anyway. Set aside a good 10 minutes to customize your ATV. It takes a little too long, but the attention to detail is quite amazing, and makes you feel like your ATV is a lot like the achievement you get when you build one form scratch – “One of a Kind”.
Needless to reiterate, the gameplay in this racer is unbelievable. It’s exciting, it’s fast as hell, and the handling/speed provide a sense of faux-danger that keeps you enticed right before every jump (i.e. “during the majority of the game”).
When you land a great jump you will be screaming as hard as when you fall on your face and see what mess you can make of the position of your virtual body. I chose the black guy. He rocked, but surprisingly said “Oh shit” at some point – way to take a chance Disney Interactive! Honestly, commendable.
Like I said before, though, you will be screaming into an empty room. Why? This game, my friends, get ready for it, is ONE PLAYER. You can play with people online – up to 16 people per-race to be exact, but you can’t play with someone in the same room. Now, I know this is quite common among games nowadays, but do I sound old in saying “what the hell?!”. This is a RACING GAME. Racing = competition, competition = you + ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. The most exciting thing about a competition is winning over someone you know, something real, something tangible. When did you have more fun, going through the motions and beating Shao Kahn and Shang Tsung in Mortal Kombat games, or owning your friends on it in multiple, nail-bitingly close and exciting games? We all know the answer. Take Mario Kart, do you look forward to winning a cup against the game or against your friends? Why are the Guitar Hero games so popular? OK, it’s because they’re innovative (for the US) and fun – but another staple of that game is the fact that you can play people, have them over, and set it up at almost any party now and people will play.
The long term playability of this game is, then, compromised when you can’t have someone over to play it. Sure, you can play people online, but then you have to have two games…and two XBoxes. It’s not practical and does not make sense for a game with a basic function that caters to, at the very least, two players. I understand if they can’t go three or four, fine, that’s ok, I’m used to abuse, but not two players in the same room? Absolutely ludicrous for a racing game, I don’t care how common it is. It makes you think, who are they targeting here? Obviously not families with more than one child, because the sharing fights would be through the room. The races are long enough to make it annoying to wait for your turn. So, with its vast attention to customizing detail, are they targeting ATV enthusiasts? Really? I mean even those guys get together with their buddies to watch “World’s Craziest _____” all the time. Can every single one of them really afford an XBox AND this game? It’s just beyond me. Maybe I’m getting old.
The game is an absolute thrill and is as beautiful as it is fun. It has me coming back for more and looking forward to playing it even while I’m at work – I actually can’t wait to come back to it. I don’t really like racing games, and quite honestly wouldn’t buy most or any of them – but if you do, this is the one to get right now (unless you don’t have XBox live). It’s an amazing, action-packed, non-stop, adrenaline-filled gaming experience that really puts you in the game and my main and only qualm with it, judging it on the basis of a racing game, is that you’re experiencing all of that alone.
Pure is now out in stores everywhere for XBox360, PS3, and PC by Disney Interactive Studios.
