Pure First Look Preview

Jason Avent, game director at Black Rock Studio, calls it the Vertigo Rush – Pure’s defining moment. You can see it coming – a small raised part of the track hurtling towards you. You boost towards it, speeding even faster, and then, with a down-up flick of the left thumb stick the driver launches into the jump…

You’re flying. Almost literally. The hard rock soundtrack dulls, the rumble of the quad bike engine barely audible over the whining wind. Things slow down ever so slightly. You’re hundreds of feet in the air. You can see 20 kilometres into the distance (really, Pure has a draw distance of 20 kilometres). You can see mountain ranges, distant structures, air balloons and small ant-like vehicles somewhere on the ground below. Now all you have to worry about is tearing your eyeballs away from the breathtaking view so you can target a safe landing, somewhere down there. Somewhere miles away.

Oh yeah, and you need to worry about tricks. Ridiculous, gravity-defying, boost-giving, point-scoring tricks. Divided up into three levels, the tricks start with your basic A button moves (the game was demoed on the 360 but will be coming to PS3 and PC), move up to the B button, through Y button tricks until you max your trick meter and make available the game’s signature tricks, like the Blindside Holy Man, where your driver leans back and clasps his hands together in prayer. “It will be really special when you do a signature trick,” says Jason. “It will be like a party going off in your game.”

Improbably you land, the quad bike and driver barely visible through a dust plume, and continue driving. You’ve just cleared almost half the stage. That, my friends, was a Vertigo Rush moment. “It’s a bit like Alan Wake”, says Jason, a smirk enveloping his face.

I mean it when I say Pure has a wow factor other racing games don’t. The graphics are tremendous, the environment and background detail is superb and the driver/quad interaction believable. The high jumps, those Vertigo Rush moments are, for me, what makes Pure. I can’t imagine getting bored of flying through the air then falling, like a World War 2 bomb, hundreds of feet onto some other part of the track. It’s insane just to watch.

The Vertigo Rush sums up Pure perfectly. Of course they’re impossible. But this game is all about exaggerated reality. Jason’s at pain to stress that Pure shouldn’t be described solely as an off-road racer. Instead, he says, Black Rock “is making an arcade racer that features quad bikes”. Pure isn’t an off-road simulation. This isn’t Gran Turismo with quad bikes. This is more like Burnout with really high jumps.

Not as immediately impressive as the Vertigo Rush but perhaps more interesting is Pure’s “three dimensional racing line”. Here drivers will need to think about more than just turning left and right. They will have to think about up and down, too. Take, for example, a standard jump. By flicking the thumb stick down and then up your driver will shift his or her momentum, using the quad suspension springs in combination with your speed to gain full control over the trajectory of the jump and where you land. You’ll want to land on a downward slope, for example, rather than an upward slope, in order to keep your speed and momentum up.

Jason says that as drivers learn the twists, turns and ups and downs of each track they will learn how to use the three dimensional racing line to get the best times. He also says that by combining skilled down/up flicks with boost you’ll be able to clear a quarter of a level in one jump, gain access to new areas and “make your own course”. Sweet.

We didn’t score a hands-on with Pure so it’s impossible to say how the racing feels. But we’ve seen a number of full races demoed by representatives of Black Rock and we can tell that the emphasis is on speed, jumps, tricks, boosting and extremely quick reflexes. There are multiple routes to take – a deliberate move considering 16 quads can make things pretty busy. There are jumps everywhere. Quads are often flying across the screen as you fly through the air yourself. One jump we saw resulted in the quad and driver flying off a cliff and falling in line with cable cars hundreds of feet high. It’s spectacular and, hopefully, will be immense fun, especially in online multiplayer.

Despite the arcade emphasis there are still sections of the game grease monkeys will find appealing. The garage, where you build your bike from the ground up, has hundreds of fully licensed parts to choose from. Jason says it all adds up to make a possible 600 types of ATVs. “No two should be the same”, he says. There are seven characters, one of which is unlocked once the Pure World Tour is completed. Each has their own set of animations and reactions to overtaking and being overtaken, cool jumps and tricks. They all have unique special tricks too, which need to be unlocked, along with outfits. Speaking of the Pure World Tour, there will be 50 events across 10 tours in seven real world locations, including Wyoming (lots of grass and trees) and New Mexico (mostly desert) in the US, and Italy (lots of water and ruins) in Europe. You’ve got the standard Race Mode, a shorter version called Sprint, and Freestyle, as well as 16-player online.

For all Jason’s efforts it will be a challenge indeed to convince British gamers that Pure isn’t just another off-road racer. And, perhaps even more of a challenge, it will be difficult convincing gamers to pick it up when MotorStorm 2 is sitting next to it on the game shelf. Difficult, but, according to Jason, not impossible.

“That and Sega Rally and DIRT, they’re all multi-vehicle racing games,” he says. “We’ve focused on quad bikes because of the familiar handling, they’ve got four wheels and they can power slide, and you can combine that with the flying through the air 100 feet up doing tricks. That’s what our game is about. It’s about flying through the air pulling off loads and loads of tricks. And it’s bringing the tricks into the core racing experience. So it’s really the first off-road trick racing game. I don’t think that’s really the same as all those other off-road racing games. We do stand apart. If you see a Vertigo Rush you go oh right, I’ve never seen that before.” My thoughts exactly.

Pure will be out on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC towards the end of September 2008.