E3 2008: Pure (Hands On)

by: Chuck - posted: 7/20/2008 12:51:00 PM

Despite a packed schedule I ended up with about fifteen minutes of free time to spend in the Concourse Hall.  After seeing all the videos and screenshots of Disney's Pure I thought I might pop over and see if the game played as well as it looks.  While the game look a lot like Sony's Motorstorm games they play concepts are vastly different.  Motorstorm is a pure racing game with various vehicle types while Pure is a trick based ATV game. 

Pure looks as good in person as it looks in all the trailers we've shown as the racing environments are lush and highly detailed.  The heard of the game is the jump trick/system.  Before you hit a jump you pull back on the left thumbstick and then push up as you go over which gives you big air.  While you are in the air you can pull off tricks with the facebuttons.  You start off with just having A button tricks available but as you pull off tricks on the track you earn boost which unlocks the other facebutton tricks.  While you're pulling off a trick you can tap the right bumper to put a twist on the move that you are currently pulling off.  These moves tend to be a bit more exotic and require more air as they take more time to pull off but that's the risk/reward of using them.

What's impressive about the game is how accessible it is.  It took me a few tries to get the controls down but once I did I was knocking out jump and tricks without a problem.  The harder tricks are really difficult to pull off but they do result in some spectacular wipe outs when you miss them.  I'm interested to see how the full game and the multiplayer works out but the brief taste of Pure I got was pretty solid.