Xtreme sports gaming and the British fascination with motorsports—name a more iconic combo. Then rizz it up with Fyre Festival's acceptable cousin and you get this game, predating the Forza Horizon series and the paradigm it's established. While modern Forza trades on its easy open-world structure and room for customization, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift hails from a time when impressive audiovisuals and tight arcade-y campaigns were more than enough. Ex-Psygnosis staffers at Evolution Studios not only had a competitor in Bizarre Creations to keep them honest, but enough cachet with Sony at large to try something this extravagant. The original MotorStorm played a key role in selling the PS3 to wider audiences, so all its sequel had to do was iterate louder, longer, and harder more confident than ever. Challenge accepted, I guess. In the end, Evolution made something reaching well beyond expectations, for better or worse, with much more stuff and challenge to offer.

| Bodies and bikes beyond repair |

Pacific Rift knows what it wants and how to deliver it. We're no longer on the continent, sliding through muddy canyons or atop arid cliffs, but having a once-in-a-lifetime demolition derby across a suspiciously tidy tropical isle. Like every amalgam of Hawaii, Tahiti, and New Zealand ever featured in games, this resort island has it all: pristine beaches, fiery volcanoes, dense jungle, and treacherous peaks to race upon. Let's put aside the cavalier desecration of Earth's last refuges, all for the amusement of the bourgeosie, and accept that Evolution just wants players to perform awe-inspiring feats of racing and stunt-craft. It's still the '90s in these developers' teary eyes, and that means no end of leagues, minigames, and gleefully impolite road raging for hours on end. We get nothing less than the decline of Western civilization dressed up as pop punk, off-roaders wearing brand sponsorships, and air pollution thick enough to send the crowds into a fugue. As a hypothetical funeral ceremony for the xtreme sports age, it ticks many boxes.

For as much sheer exhilaration as Evolution's down-and-dirty racer gives me, there's plenty more frustration than I had hoped for. This mainly boils down to excessive rubber-banding—lightweight early on, but quite noticeable heading into the later stages and leagues. If you ever end up on a teeny lil' bike or have to race big rigs in an ATV, then godspeed! The AI loves to punt, shove, shunt, and wreck the player as much it can after the opening hour or so of racing, which makes driving anything but the tankiest vehicles a chore when having to restart. Rather than give more leeway via a qualifying lap to learn each course, or a way to reduce/disable rubber-banding entirely, Pacific Rift enforces its "our way or bust" progression and difficulty balance to a fault. Not a fan.

| The smell of oil and gas in the air |

Thankfully the game offers 16 race-tracks and many variations on the iconic MotorStorm ride types to keep things varied. I especially love how the buggies, bikes, and rally cars handle throughout each level, with different track surfaces having a tangible effect on each vehicle. Controls are weighty, almost simcade-like compared to the golden age of Burnout, but refined from the prequel and nary hard enough to use when navigating traffic. Part of this ease comes from the level designs themselves, with ample space to corner around opponents and room enough to go several racers wide in spots. Evolution balks at the claustrophobia of other racers, instead asking "what if all our courses were as expansive as battlefields?" And they made the right choice. Watching and participating in the sheer carnage that is high-level Pacific Rift racing, from Knievel-ish leaps of faith to hardcore brawls in the dirt and sand with neither contestant coming out on top.

Customization, though present via choosing multiple driver skins and liveries, never becomes the centerpiece it ought to. I'd have loved to tinker around with custom skins and other ways of tuning up vehicles beyond a few selectable adjustments. Had I been around for the game's online scene, this would have brought some much-needed longevity into the game loop. With no way to really make any ride your own or set up custom race series, Evolution must have figured their average player was already overwhelmed and needed a simpler structure to keep the chaos parse-able. I've got no better way to explain why, despite building off the original MotorStorm's framework, the sequel lacks that ambition in meaningful playtime which the Horizon games at least try to attain. Regardless, I'd bet this ended up more fun with humans than when going up against an AI mainly interested in forcing you to wipeout, let alone race competitively.

| And the glint of a solitary shaft of chromium steel |

What I can't ruthlessly criticize is the presentation in Pacific Rift. No amount of aging textures, lower-poly environments, or carefully hacked VFX can take away from how succulent these graphics are. It's a great combo of arcade realism and baffling technical wizardry, something the PS3 could have used more of. Water ripples and shines convincingly, the earth molds and deforms according to tectonic and artificial pressures, and particles leap up from all directions onto the screen in so much detail. At most, I'll concede that this game and its prequel are some of the more visually busy racers one can play, but never enough to make following the racing line and other drivers difficult or annoying. I really wish I had proper minimap, however!

Sony just couldn't deny itself the chance to add a record store's worth of its own labels' licensed music, either, following the tradition they started with Gran Turismo. I struggle to remember a lot of these tracks, even ones from bands like Queens of the Stone Age, but damn if the overall atmosphere isn't fitting. Part of this pleasant amnesia comes from the game's sound design, which outdoes the predecessor's raucous mix of engine roars, crunching metal, and sudden silence when watching yourself careen in slow motion. Combine all this with plenty of post-processing (visual and aural) and the whole thing becomes phantasmagoric, a whirlwind of athleticism and sensory overload that would make Mad Max proud.

Despite only making small improvements over the formula and falling into a bit of an irritating, repetitive slump partway through, I had a damn fun time with MotorStorm: Pacific Rift, just as I hoped. Without having yet played Drive Club, it's easy for me to grasp why people mourn the loss of Evolution Studios, Bizarre, Studio Liverpool, and other arcade racer studios of old. This series shows almost precisely how you can translate the goofy, unrealistic blockbuster delights of '90s racing classics into the HD+ era, what with MotorStorm: Apocalypse going all in on surviving one set-piece after another. Here, though, the action's more organic, shaped by capricious crowds swerving and overtaking against each other to dodge peril and take the podium. It's tempting to compare this to kart racers, so I'll compromise and deem this more of a modern take on what SEGA's Power Drift evoked back in the '80s: a semblance of real motorsports corrupted by ballooning budgets, loud personalities, and proudly throwing caution to the wind. The eternal weekend of motor mayhem lives on.