Most of today's racing games only offer Ferraris, Mercedes and Porsches. Not that we're complaining, but we'd love to go off-road. For that, there's Pure, a thrilling ATV racer from Disney Interactive Studios. Instead of driving a Honda Civic around the same, stale track, we blast through the mud, blaze through a tropical forest and fly off jumps while performing incredible tricks. Some of it's been done before in Sony and THQ's ATV Offroad Fury and MX vs. ATV video games, respectively, but Disney is onto something, and it just might have the year's best racer.
Pure has two things going for it: beautiful scenery and super speed. Throughout your travels, you'll visit seven different real world locations such as Italy, Thailand and New Mexico. Each of these 30 included tracks are exquisitely detailed, sporting lush greenery, crystal clear water and miles of yellow sand. While in Italy, you'll marvel at the ancient ruins and attractive beaches. As you explore New Mexico, you'll plow through the desert, kicking up sand from your tires. No matter the location, Pure has plenty of eye candy.
Keep in mind, however, that admiring the pretty scenery for too long will result in your rider sailing head first into a rock. These ATVs are so fast that playing for just a few seconds will get your adrenaline flowing, producing the kind of excitement often experienced while playing the Burnout games. Now combine that with the visuals, and Pure is quite exhilarating.
It's also a blast to play, thanks to an interesting trick system. Every time you fly off a cliff, you should pre-load by tilting the left analog stick down and then up. If you do it at the right moment, you'll catch big air and have the opportunity to perform tricks. To do this, you press one of the controller's face buttons (you can also modify the trick by hitting a shoulder button). You start out with one button, and if you successfully pull off tricks and fill your boost meter, you'll gain access to another, so the goal is to gain access to the entire controller. Screw up enough times, though, and you'll lose buttons as well as the opportunity to do more advanced tricks. With that in mind, you can always start over by pre-loading and then doing the available stunts.
Throughout your racing career, you'll enjoy three unique modes that support up to 16 players. Race is your standard three laps around a track. Sprint is a much faster game type with a single jump. Finally, Freestyle challenges you to score points and earn gas by completing tricks and running into power-ups. Fail to do tricks, and you'll run out of gas and re-spawn. And if single player gets boring, you can always hop online which, thus far, runs impressively smooth.
In addition, you have the option of creating an ATV from scratch using the game's editor. You'll start with the frame and then build your dream vehicle using thousands of licensed and unlicensed parts. Then you can customize it with a paint job or stickers. Unfortunately, you can't make your own designs (ala Forza 2) because Disney wants to prevent gamers from making obscene images.
In a year full of big budget sequels, Pure came out of nowhere and we're impressed. Disney, of all publishers, has managed to develop a fun and accessible game for all ages, and we can't wait to explore the rest of the courses and create our own ATVs when the game hits September 16.
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