Pure Review

This is what a fun racer should be doing.  Letting you travel at insane speeds, over ramps and hills to get obscene height, then pull off ridiculous tricks just because you can. This is what Pure, by Black Rock Studio and Disney Interactive allows you to do.

When you first boot up the game, you'll be surprised to find there's no immediate title screen. Instead you are thrown straight into the action in a training mode, which makes you play the basics before you get into the main game and that's where you'll have your fun.

The majority of the game is spent doing utterly impossible tricks on your quad bike, and when you're doing this, it's fantastic. It’s let down only by a small selection of tricks compared to most other games of this nature (keeping in mind it is basically an extreme sports game disguised as an off-road racer).  When you first start your career, you are able to pick a pre-set quad, or build your own, literally, from the ground up, choosing nearly every part of the bike.  This is fun at first, but can get a bit tedious when you're upgrading your third bike, thankfully there's a quick-upgrade feature to take the work load away from you and let you get back to the racing.

World Tour mode is where you'll spend most of your time.  This is the game’s career mode, and you'll be taking part in a huge amount of races over 12 different areas.  There are three different types of races; race (the standard race), sprint (get the fastest laptime) and freestyle (racking up the biggest score in the time limit).  Freestyle is easily the most fun I had, spending a considerable amount of time just going over the huge gaps pulling off insane tricks.  This is where the game truly shines as I found myself spending upwards of an hour on one course trying to get the top score.

Race and sprint are standards in a racing game, get from A to B in a race or get the fastest time in a sprint.  These can get monotonous but are worth it to get the next freestyle challenge.  Freestyles are basically arcade style trick-a-thons, with you pulling of insane tricks to rack up the points, and gaining adrenaline.  Adrenaline fills up as you pull off tricks and it comes in three tiers, each tier allowing you to perform better tricks.  Each tier is represented by a single button (either square, triangle or X) and once you have maxed out the adrenaline, you are able to perform a special trick, with each character having their own unique manoeuver.

Other than World Tour, unfortunately there isn't much more of a single player game here, aside from a standard time trial mode, which is just what you would expect: complete the course as fast as possible.  However, the multi-player makes up for this in what can be very hectic 16 player online races.  These races can be great fun, as you see other players pulling off great tricks in the air next to you.  The games go without a hint of lag, and there were never any problems connecting to a game.

The graphics in Pure, as is usually expected of a racing game where you will mainly be looking at the vehicles and the environments, are as good as you would hope.  The vistas in the distance look downright amazing sometimes, with acres of mountains and other assorted scenery.  Character models in particular are well done, with clothing bustling in the wind as you speed around the course.  Small touches like this make the game all the more satisfying as you hear the whistling air around you.

Character voices can be annoying as it seems the designers have gone with the younger people for voice acting.  Unfortunately the young people they have onboard sound like they are trying too hard to be “cool” which can be frustrating after hearing “Yee-ha!” screamed for the fiftieth time.

All said, Pure isn't the deepest of racing games.  The World Tour is really the only thing to satisfy a single player, and online races can wear thin after a while but there's extra costumes and parts for your ATV to unlock, adding a little replay.  

With a few more tracks and maybe an extra mode or two, this could have been a long lasting fun experience.  As it is though, it's a good, fun arcade racing game which you'll enjoy for a short while, and maybe come back to every now and again for a quick thrill.  It looks great, plays great and is a lot of fun, and at the end of the day, Pure fun (see what I did there?) is what this game is all about.