REVIEW
Pure
By Shaun Hatton - November 7th, 2008
If you like racing games that are fast and full of stunts, chances are you’ll dig Pure, the off road ATV racing and freestyle game from Blackrock Studios. You don’t even have to be a fan of ATVs but it obviously does help.
The game essentially has two styles of play, both of which require different styles of bikes. The Freestyle mode of play puts heavy emphasis on stunt performance while the Sprint mode features shorter tracks where the object is to get from start to finish as quickly as possible (it’s a race, after all). Pure also features a 16-player online racing mode if that’s the kind of thing that you’re into. Split screen multiplayer is unfortunately not a part of the game, but considering the graphic quality of its scenery it’s understandable the developers wouldn’t want all that detail crammed into a small portion of screen real estate.
There are a few tutorials to get through before being able to get into the game properly, but they outline all the basics you’ll need to start mastering jumps and tricks. In the Freestyle races, the courses feature forking and alternate paths, some of which have higher jumps than others. The more stunts you perform per race, the more stunts you unlock. Each consecutive set of stunts is more complicated then the previous and requires additional time to pull off. Landing tricks is another talent altogether, as one minor flub-up will result in a decrease of the Thrill Bar (which is the boost and trick metre, but with a fancy name). Ideally, you’ll eventually get to the point where the Thrill Bar is full for most of the race.
