Motorstorm Time Trial Review

After about a half a year of getting hosed by Sony, the Europeans finally get something before the US in the form of a Motorstorm update, complete with an updated multiplayer and the biggest feature, a time trial. Is this compensation for the late releases, higher prices, and crappier Playstation Store? Find out in my first A Gamer's Lament branded review of the Motorstorm time trial update.

Before I start the review, I have to say that I had pretty much shelved Motorstorm at this time. After the first couple of weeks, the novelty of the utter destruction had worn off, and it was replaced with Resistance, Madden, MLB 2K7, and demos from the Playstation Store (the American one, mind you). I had thought that all hope was lost for Motorstorm until this update came back, but it did, and it saved the game in my eyes, at least for a little while.

Motorstorm was filled with both fun and frustration, among other 'f' words, and the time trial update brought even more. Flying through the level in a rally car brings the extra fun into the game, while struggling to hit everything perfectly brings the frustration, and plenty of it. If you crash, then you'll probably want to restart, since you'll never get a respectable time if you crash. If you do hit the perfect mark and get that nice time, however, there is a great sense of accomplishment when you see your name high up on the leaderboard.

Another great addition to the time trial mode is the ability to race against ghosts. You can pick from 21 ghosts, seven from your own times, seven which are entitled 'Motorstorm's best' are from the testers with the top times, and seven are free to download from the top 250 times recorded. The seven times in each category are one from each vehicle, so it's a pretty cool feature. You can race seven at one time, or race against three of the same vehicle to find out the best routes.

The only con to the update is that the leaderboard only lets you download the top 250 times, and not a one lower. What I'd like to see is being able to download times from people on your friends list, no matter what, but I haven't been able to check that out because all of my friends are in the US, where the update arrives tomorrow. It would also be nice to download multiple ghosts from the same vehicles.

I'm always happy when the PAL region gets something before the US that isn't Singstar, but this one would be acceptable even if PAL would've gotten it late. The time trial breathes new life into Motorstorm, and now I'm anxiously awaiting the next update, hoping that it might carry split-screen multiplayer (I can dream, can't I?). Is this enough compensation for all of the bad things that Sony is doing to the PAL region? Not really, but it is awfully nice of them to finally give PAL something first. 9/10