The most brutal offroad racing festival is back, with players once again descending on the wild and alternative MotorStorm Festival. However, this time the location has changed dramatically, with players attempting to tackle the diversity and unpredictability of a remote Pacific island environment. Developed by Evolution Studios exclusively for PS3, MotorStorm Pacific Rift revisits the intense racing action introduced in last year’s MotorStorm, this time allowing players to navigate a radically different tropical environment chock full of lush jungle, towering peaks, and crystal-clear water.

The Island is divided into four separate racing zones: Earth Zone, Wind Zone, Water Zone and Fire Zone, each with four multi-route tracks. Each zone takes the world’s elements very seriously, boasting its own uniquely dangerous climate. Get right into the thick of the island’s dense jungles when you enter the Earth Zone. Difficult to judge what’s ahead of you, the island’s heavy undergrowth hides all sorts of hazards, and the vegetation won’t just get in your way – it’ll fight back! Then, leave the undergrowth beneath you for the dizzying heights above you when you enter the Air Zone. Hurtle downhill, teeter on cliff edges and get big air on huge-scale jumps as you soar through four adrenalin-pumped racetracks.

Meanwhile, deep within The Island’s volcanic lava fields, the Fire Zone is full of red-hot dangers forged into nature’s crucible. Speed across four fiery racetracks characterised by rocky wastelands and creeping cascades of lava. The festival organisers have done their best to put up makeshift ramps and flags – but don’t expect any crash barriers! Finally – it’s time to cool off in the Water Zone – crashing across serene coastlines, through plunging waterfalls and across treacherous river canyons.

As in the original MotorStorm, tracks can only be accessed with tickets. Racers must obtain either a gold, silver or bronze medal in each track to increase their ranking and access more tickets to more tracks. Extra vehicles can be unlocked by competing in the MotorStorm Event- where you can throttle drivers all over the world as you play online via PlayStation Network. Compete with up to 16 mates or online players; and for the first time, racers in the same location can hit the gas in four-player split-screen mode.

Badlands: “A giant track, racing at the feet of a giant cinder cone, Badlands has a name that’s perfectly descriptive. Wait until you see the enormous active crater you need to jump over, or the blind, sheer precipices you need to tear round at high speed if you’re to have any chance of winning. And let’s not get into the collapsed tunnels and the huge canyon jump that crosses the track 75 feet in the air. These are MotorStorm lands. These are Badlands.”

Beachcomber: “The black sand is evidence of the awesome power of nature, created by lava flowing into the ocean which explodes as it is supercooled by the water. The WWII airbase and the unexploded bombs are evidence of the awesome destructive power of man. The sheer carnage created when these are combined is evidence of the awesome power of the MotorStorm. Let battle commence!”

Caldera Ridge: “The race organizers looked long and hard to find some driveable routes here, but in the end decided it’d be more fun driving vehicles over the edge of an enormous crater and barrelling out-of-control down a near-vertical slope. And that’s exactly why the race organizers don’t get invited to make race tracks for anyone else. Ever.”

Cascade Falls: “Dense jungle, thick with haze, gives way to wide-open plateaus and rickety scaffold. The tropical setting makes for a fascinating blend of beauty and danger – much like my ex-wife. The key to success is to keep it honest – don’t take any unnecessary risks, and don’t get caught making out behind the start gantry.”

Colossus Canyon: “This track has it all – beautiful forest, vibrant fauna, and a picturesque mountain stream that courses through a narrow gorge, over brook and water-meadow, and plummets over an enormous waterfall. Let’s face it; if you’re only going to accidentally plummet over one giant precipice in your MotorStorm career, this is the one to do it on. Today is a good day to fly.”

Kanaloa Bay: “Sun-kissed, secluded, sandy, and slightly more treacherous than its good looks first suggest, Kanaloa Bay is a great track to be a spectator at. It’s an awesome beach party with a welcome smattering of vehicular carnage running through it. But beware the dark territory beyond the lagoon – space gets real tight, real quick in that steamy jungle stretch.”

Mudslide: “The clue’s largely in the title: Mudslide is like one of those crazy rides you get at water parks, except with mud instead of water. Still, there’s plenty of slip-slidey action to engage in, with high routes available for those of you without the tires to tackle the mud.”

Paradise Beach: “Paradise Beach was perfect. Clear skies, gentle surf, warm water. It was a small town, and the living was good. Was, that is, until 30 years ago when the fire-God Pele cruised into town in his fiery hotrod of molten death, and literally tore up the strip. Now all that remains is dust and bones. Welcome to Paradise.”

Rain God Spires: “A humid, slippery, unfeasibly dangerous track set at the summit of a towering cathedral amongst heavy, pendulous tropical clouds. With immense slick precipices over immense drop-offs, Rain God brings hell to the Heavens and provides one of the Festival’s most dangerous and deadly roller-coaster rides.”

Razorback: “The Daddy. Mud, dirt, flora, caves, rock, water. Deadly drop-offs, dangerous jumps, spectacular falls and fast-flowing rivers. This is the big one – the whole MotorStorm ethos showcased in a single, epic track. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, your time to shine is now.”

Riptide: “The crowd-pleaser down on the beach, Riptide is the unholy offspring of MotoX and MotorStorm. From MotoX it has inherited ramps, big jumps, whoops, rollers, tight banked turns and technical hairpins, and from MotorStorm its blue eyes, cute little button nose and sandy complexion.”

Scorched: “Fire, steam, lava, craters – Scorched is about as far away from the golden beaches and cool blue ocean as possible. The heat and dust make a real mess of your engine, and the lava will make a real mess of you. Once you’re out of the barren lands, you may think you’ve escaped unharmed, but the thick forested area on the back section of the track throws up plenty of its own unique hazards.”

Sugar Rush: “Only MotorStormers would think to stage a race in and around an old sugar plantation. The sharp machinery and rusty metal, those rust-weakened floors and rotten walls, and the zero-visibility of the cane fields all combine to make this track a sickly-sweet rush that’s going to ruin more than just your teeth.”

The Edge: “There’s at least half a track here that isn’t ridiculously dangerous. The other half is on a camber so extreme that descriptions like ‘gnarly’, ‘radical’ and ‘utterly ridiculous’ don’t begin to convey it. This is all about keeping traction, and keeping nerve. Seasoned MotorStormers are already declaring ‘Don’t lose your bottle on the Edge – because if you do it’ll probably fall and kill someone half a mile below you”. Wise words indeed.”

The Rift: “The Rift: a mile-long tear in the world that is said to be the serpentine trail to the dark underworld of the God Milu. Formed from multiple interlinking lava tubes created over millennia, the Rift is a tight, claustrophobic journey through the jaws of the underworld, where death awaits the wearied traveler at every turn.”

Wildfire: “Trapped in no-man’s land between a deadly lava deluge and an unforgiving ocean, Wildfire is the rock between two hard places - a very temporary island-hopping race over the elemental battlefield where fire and water collide. Smoke and steam conspire to reduce race visibility to a minimum while the route screams along perilous cliff-edges and leaps across rifts and chasms.”

Features:

• Stunning Tropical Environments – racing locations set amongst the lush jungle, emerald lagoons and towering peaks of a remote Pacific island.
• Robust Multiplayer Racing Action – For the first time, MotorStorm Pacific Rift offers players the opportunity to challenge friends offline with four player split screen racing. Additionally, players will be able to challenge others online in races of up to 20 vehicles.
• Additional Tracks – MotorStorm Pacific Rift introduces 16 diverse, multi-route tracks to challenge even the most seasoned racers.
• New Vehicles – As the biggest vehicles available yet, a new monster truck class is available in addition to ATVs, rally cars, buggies, motorbikes, race trucks, mudpluggers, and Big Rigs.
• Extensive PLAYSTATION® Network Options – Features include matchmaking, detailed stats and leaderboards, plus plans for comprehensive downloadable content including tracks, vehicles, tickets, game modes, and themes.
• Attacking and Offensive Driving – Players must not only try to win the race but survive against the other racers. Combat-like racing takes center stage as the vehicles are the weapons.
• Cutting-Edge Artificial Intelligence – A.I. analyzes the race and surroundings and reacts in the most realistic manner possible. Not only will the competition try to win the race at all costs, but the A.I. will react to situations realistically, such as locating the best routes and changing the level of driving aggression based on player actions.
• Real-time Track Deformation – Players will never experience the same lap twice as each vehicle will carve up the track in varying depths, making navigation of each lap different than the last.
• Physics-Based Car Damage – Players will break and destroy a vehicle’s parts and panels during collisions with other drivers as well as with objects in the environment.