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.

In each of the new expansions there are 3 brand new tracks, playable in all online modes, and offline in Time Attack, Free Play, and Split Screen. Let’s take in the holiday brochure descriptions of the new locations, pack by pack.

Expansion: Speed

Quicksands: The sea breeze in your racing leathers, the sand in your face, crystal clear seawater in your gas tank…Quicksands isn’t just sun-kissed, it’s sun-smooched-on-the-doorstep-and-put-out-on-the-first-date. When ‘beautiful azure waters’ sits so close to ‘brutal, deadly crossovers’ in the brochure description, you’ll be saying, “Wish you were here,” while wishing you were somewhere else at the same time.

Darkfire Swamp: No sooner was this swamp-based track completed than Mother Nature decided to do some heavy handed redesign. With fissures opened up along its length, long-stagnant pools drained and dried, and deadly molten lava rolling in for some hot pool party action, the MotorStorm organizers decided it was the best redesign EVER.

Engorged: Through an impossibly narrow chasm where sunlight rarely shines, natures torrents carve new, untamed-able routes for her disciples to follow. Big boulders, fast waters and epic vistas; this track satisfies every appetite. One to really gorge on, you’ll need a hunger for survival – get ready to jump to the main course.

Expansion: Adrenaline;

Reef Runner: The world’s downright-prettiest boat graveyard, Reefrunner combines hard, fast sand flats, wide coastal shallows and a lightning-fast, foliage-packed jungle sprint. Lightweights should look to hop over the sand banks, heavyweights can tear through the shallows, and everyone else can stick to the middle routes while trying to apply the sunblock and get their swimming trunks on for the post-race beach party.

Brimstone: Spurred on by a love of all things stupid and deadly, the hardcore lunatics united and set up this battlefield of a racetrack. Located inside an unstable volcanic wasteland, Brimstone offers smoking craters, sulphurous lakes, and deadly underground lava tubes. Hell above and Hell below makes this a hell of a good place to stage a race.

Hollowed Earth: At the top of the Island lies the racetrack at the bottom of the world. Built in and around a cavernous and complex natural cave system, Hollowed Earth demands fast reactions, racing discipline, and the ability not to think about the millions of tons of unstable volcanic rock directly above your head. A torch and a mining helmet probably wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Each expansion pack also re-introduces familiar tracks in entirely new ways. Dubbed as ‘Track Variants’, there are 8 in total, selected from the most popular online tracks, and all given the ‘Volcanic’ subtitle. Rather than just tweaking the tracks by adding a few routes here and closing a few others off there with barriers or fencing, these redesigns are themed around the idea of the Island going fully volcanic! Imagine lava Bombs spattering the track, erupting volcanoes, ash falling in the air, lava spewing across racing lines, the whole works! Each of these tracks features different degrees of ‘natural interference’ ; at one end of the scale we have The Edge Volcanic, which as an Air track isn’t going to see too much direct Lava interference, but is going to have its racing lines significantly affected by huge chunks of molten rocks smashing all over the track. At the other extreme, Earth and Fire tracks like Rift Volcanic and Scorched Volcanic show just what can happen at ground zero when the fires of hell spill out over the raceways! Lava levels rise, mud fields bake and crack, standing water evaporates, and tracks you think you know all too well suddenly provide an altogether different racing experience!

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.