This isn’t the MotorStorm that I knew from PS3, and I’m glad it isn’t. It is so different that it’s best to completely disregard anything you know about the previous MotorStorm games. RC is about competition, it’s about quick races in which you focus on setting your best time, and then spending countless retries to shave off as many seconds and milliseconds as you can. Restarts are quick, they need to be, as one little mistake within seconds of starting can ruin your chances of setting a record-breaking time.
Need your own space? Try Hot Lap mode.
This is a game that doesn’t have to be played whilst connected to the PSN, but it most certainly benefits from it. You could just aim to get the gold medal and move on, but I found the real fun was to be found in beating as many of the times set by people on my friends list as I could. The ghosts of those whose times you are trying to beat can be shown, useful for getting insight into just how they managed to leave you in the dust. Depending on how good you are, or how bad the people on your friends list are, you can try to better any other MotorStorm RC players too (whether they play on PS3 or PS Vita).
I think it is really easy to gauge whether MotorStorm RC is a game you would be interested in. A simple game that doesn’t have weapons or boost-pads, nothing that would get in the way of the main objective of the game, bettering your time. You are informed when a friend has beaten one of your times, and have the option to go and spend more countless retries to reclaim your rightful place.
Drift mode mixes things up nicely
It doesn’t stand for Release Candidate by the way, it stands for Remote Control, you know, those little toy cars. Despite the brilliant price, this is the finished product.
I wouldn’t say that RC is fun; it certainly can draw you in, have you replaying the same track over and over again, determined to better so-and-so’stime. I know it doesn’t sound enjoyable or attractive; it is of course, just in a different way. It plays so well, that all the retries aren’t problematic. When you finally manage to reach, or even surpass your target it really does feel great. It’s not often that you have a game where you replay levels dozens of times, and it’s even rarer that it’s so central to the enjoyment of the game. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a ‘real’ MotorStorm game on PS Vita at some point in the future, but for me RC is exactly what the series needed.
Disclaimer: Reviews, as always, present opinions on various topics, and ED reviews are no different. While we do aim to inform and entertain, we are susceptible to bias, and as such our opinions may differ from your own and our experiences most definitely do. We try to be as accurate with the facts as we can, but we reserve the right to be pretty dang ridiculous with our opinions and speculation and all that extra stuff. Feel free to call us out on any bullshit though, we do appreciate it.