Ahead of getting the opportunity to jump into the competition for yourself (Vita Rooms is still on the road, by the way!), I’m here to give you the low down on just how online competition works with other players – running you through a short video of me competing with Zoe (Evolution Studios QA Manager, who sits on the desk across from me) as I take on her performance in a Hot Lap race.

It’s so easy to see what your friends and rivals have been up to and, with super-fast load times on both PS3 and PS Vita, jump into a race instantly to beat their fastest times and wipe the smirk off their face.

Competing like this, on your own schedule, is a perfect fit for both MotorStorm RC and the PlayStation Vita, letting you pick up the game and compete against friends when it’s convenient for you. Whether you’re playing on your PS Vita or PS3, for a few minutes or a few hours, out and about or in the comfort of your own home, you can always see what’s been going on and get right into the heat of competition.

MotorStorm RC is coming soon, so keep an eye out for more information and be sure to join us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/motorstormrc and follow us on Twitter @MotorStormRC to keep up to speed.

We love this time of year. There are tons of great games out and there are always high hopes for a White Christmas, because few things are as exciting to drive on as freshly fallen snow. Maybe we’ll get to take the truck out for a spin again…

We’re also looking forward to 2012, to showing you more of MotorStorm RC and creating exciting new things. We’re hiring too, so if you’d like to be a part of the family (and you’re particularly highly skilled in C++ programming) then please head over to www.playstationjobs.com

Enjoy your holidays! We hope to see you on the new mirrored tracks playlist in MotorStorm Apocalypse (look out for us in the black carbon ‘Evolution’ liveries)! All the best for 2012 and keep in touch – we love hearing from you!

If you have any further questions then please let us know in the comments and I’ll get the answers.

I’m Paul Rustchynsky, and I’ve been Game Director to a small, elite team at Evolution Studios for most of the year, creating a simulation of high-speed radio-controlled car racing for PSN download. We’re extremely pleased with how the game is coming together; it’s a perfect combination of classic racing with really modern connectivity features and it’s already bigger than your average download game, with visually stunning renditions of all four MotorStorm worlds (and 8 of their vehicle classes). Every aspect of the game comes loaded with endless competition that you can share with friends and rivals worldwide – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both – and we’re still packing it full of challenges, race types and features too!

Everyone who has played MotorStorm RC so far says it really gets you hooked, with an addictive, hypnotic core experience – just like the best arcade games. Also like the best arcade games, stages take just moments to load, giving it that ‘just one more go’ quality, especially when you can play at home on PS3 and then continue your progress on the go with PS Vita.

And it’s still early days! We’ve got a lot more lined up and we’ll share all of it with you as the game comes together, but for now please check out our trailer and some of the killer features in MotorStorm RC!

THIS IS OFF-ROAD RACING ON A WHOLE NEW SCALE

Conquer the most extreme racing environments in powerful radio-controlled vehicles, with hundreds of uniquely customised models to collect and performance based on 8 distinct racing categories: Buggies, Superminis, Rally Cars, Muscle Cars, Racing Trucks, Supercars, Big Rigs and Monster Trucks!

4 CLASSIC LOCATIONS, 16 UNIQUE TRACKS

Experience the simultaneous challenge and excitement of racing in the world’s most extreme environments, from the dusty desert mesa’s of Monument Valley, to the dangerous jungles of a Pacific island, to the icy tundra at the Arctic Edge, to the apocalyptic ruins of an urban city.

SETTLE RIVALRIES ANYTIME, ANYPLACE

Challenge friends and the rest of the world to compete for the fastest times in every event – whether that’s on PS3 or PS Vita, or both.

SHARE EVERY MOMENT

Share every moment with your friends and make new friends via the Pitwall. Keep tabs on their activity – so you always know when there’s a new challenge or a new leader – and you can always stay one step ahead of the competition.

4 PLAYER MULTIPLAYER ON PS3

Settle the score with your friends in person with 4 player split-screen races.

PAY ONCE, GET BOTH

It’s the same experience on both PS3 and PS Vita, and picking up the game on PS3 will give you full access to the game on PS Vita (and vice versa) – so if you own both you can carry your progress between the two, and always pick up where you left off.

Here are some of the headlines…

You May Have Heard…We’re Heading to the City!

But this is no ordinary city. In the same way that the first MotorStorm was set in Monument Valley, and MotorStorm Pacific Rift was set on ‘The Island’, inspired by Hawaii and other Pacific islands, we’ve set this MotorStorm in ‘The City’, inspired by the West Coast of America, and, in particular, the Bay Area of California.

MotorStorm’s brand of racing is not about ‘going urban’ though. We all know that the lunatic ‘Stormers would take every expectation about street racing and turn it upside-down. So this is what they’ve done. Welcome to Brutal Urban Off-Road Racing!

Post Apocalyptic? NO!

The city has been abandoned and somewhat damaged after a tremor. When the ‘Stormers find this out, they head straight in. Pretty soon, two things become clear: it isn’t completely empty and Mother Nature isn’t done yet!

Throughout the game the city will be ripped to pieces, in real-time, as you race. Routes will be affected, as will our emergent gameplay.

Buggies using collapsing walls as half-pipes. Big Rigs on the rooftops of skyscrapers as they collapse. Superbikes gunning into the basements of enormous rifts. Supercars flicking on their headlights to barrel through the subways and sewers. Multi-vehicle pile ups on giant bridges as they buckle and twist. Driving through someone’s office and smashing up their desks. It’s all there.

Two groups have also stayed behind, and neither takes too kindly to MotorStorm’s arrival. I’ll talk more about them another time, but for now I’ll say that when they realise there isn’t going to be much of a city left, they start to destroy it too.

This isn’t post-apocalyptic. It’s apocalyptic. You are there when it happens. It’s survival racing.

Variety, Chronology and Depth are King

We’ve listened to everything people said about our previous games and, as a result, one of our priorities is to make a more satifsying overall game experience. In our single-player mode, every race is unique. When a building comes down it stays down. When you race a track again, the buildings will still be down and the MotorStorm crew will have carved yet more routes into the ruined landscape. The only time you’ll see the same thing twice is when you choose to. Underscoring this chronology is the fact that you’ll get to see the game from three different viewpoints.

Nothing annoys me more than the notion that an accessible action racer must also be shallow or plain dumb. So once you have experienced the single-player journey, the true depth of our title will come to the fore. Our overhauled ‘Wreckreation’ mode has been heavily influenced by the best online titles: from shooters and action adventures, RPGs and platformers. It features:

• Sixteen player online multiplayer.
• Four player split-screen.
• Combinations of the two. Play with three friends in the living room against 12 more online.
• Massive vehicle customisation. Change vinyls, vehicle parts, vehicle shapes and more. Upload them to the community site and share them with others. They automatically work on all vehicle types, and include your PSN ID.
• Vehicle perks. Modify your handling, boosting and offensive abilities as you unlock new perks.
• A wealth of rankings to progess through online with associated rewards and recognition.
• Stacks of online rewards to earn and persistent progress giving the most determined and successful racers the status and recognition they deserve.
• Persistent matchmaking. Keep your party together throughout your gaming session.
• A Game Mode Creator. From a completely blank canvas you can design your own game rules and victory conditions, play them online, and incorporate them into tournaments.

Lots More

We’ve got a lot more to reveal too; things like replacing loading screens with cut-scenes that finally reveal what it’s like to be a part of the MotorStorm subculture, to changes to handling and boosting, to the five completely new vehicle classes making their way to this festival.

The end of the world…is just the beginning

Let me know your thoughts.

That’s right, the stunning new MotorStorm Carrier has arrived in PS Home! Hinted at a few months back in the MotorStorm Sphere, the new MotorStorm space is a decommissioned aircraft Carrier. Bought by a wealthy, anonymous, rock star and donated to MotorStorm, the spaces comes complete with a number of mini-games, quests and funky rewards.

Check out the trailer below of this fantastic new space:

Try your hand at Lunatic Launcher arcade game or help out some of the ‘Stormers roaming about the space for your chance to win a prize. Or, if the mood takes you, spin some tracks at the DJ decks, where you can also play around with the smoke machine and lights. There’s plenty to do, and the choice is yours.

Once you’re done in the Carrier, we have possibly the best personal space out there! The brand-new (and incredibly cute) Loco Island. Watch the trailer below to see what’s coming:

This personal space comes complete with a swing, slide and hammock (for when you want to rest those weary virtual feet), as well as an array of LocoRoco characters including Mui Mui and Chuppa. Incidentally, the Chuppa can send your avatar soaring to the top of the tree house if required.

There are also lots of hidden features in this personal space. Try dancing in front of the LocoRoco for a nice surprise… You’ll also have the option to assist with renovating, or maybe even take part in a spot of farming: this isn’t one you want to miss out on! The Loco Island can be yours from Home Estates for the bargain price of £3.99.

The Mui Mui Ship is the perfect place for you to take a virtual cruise, from where you can look out at Loco Island and participate in a variety of activities. Sit down to a strategic game of LocoReverse, or have a bet on the hourly Domingo race with the pickories you’ve located.

Sodium updates this week, bringing new rewards for the Salt Shooter mini-game. These fantastic Tank Accolades – in Salt, Bronze, Silver and Gold variants – will unlock as you play through the Salt Shooter levels. For those who have purchased to Chilli Pilot jacket, tomorrow you will receive the full pilot outfit along with any jacket upgrades you have earned. VICKIE will also be updated with new content for purchase with your hard-earned credits!

The first anniversary of the PlayStation Home is rapidly approaching, and we’re rewarding everyone who has joined us in making Home an amazing community. As our treat to you, we will be giving away the fantastic new Tree House personal space for free. Available from Home Estates from this Thursday, the Tree House will be free for a period of two weeks only. The Tree House is sure to be a great addition to your estates portfolio, so make sure to get yours!

Once you have your Tree House, you may want to check out the new MotorStorm: Pacific Rift camp personal space. This is the perfect beachfront campsite for you to unwind in after a day of brutal off-road racing.

Complete with a dance tent, and your own personal dock for any incoming nautical traffic. Let’s hope the volcano in the distance doesn’t erupt any time soon. Available from tomorrow, in the Estates section of the Shopping Centre.

Not content with celebrating our anniversary, we’re also celebrating the festive season with the opening of the Winter Wonderland space. This space will evolve over time as you help Santa’s bumbling elves complete the festive decorations. Make sure to visit Santa in his grotto regularly so you don’t miss out on any of the mini-games. Finally, being the festive season, you’ll also find plenty of gifts and other rewards that will make this space somewhere to visit daily.

Finally, over in the Alter Ego store, a crazy fashion designer has been let loose. If you’ve ever wanted to saunter around home with a coloured light on top of your head, now you can! For both male and female, these flashy hats come in four colours – red, blue, green, and yellow – and are sure to make you stand out in a crowd. For those who enjoy hiding their identity, there are also two new masks available.

As an additional piece of news, a resolution for the Z(7,-104) error that a small number of people were encountering when logging in to Home has been identified. In order to resolve this problem we will be rolling back the last reward item that was received on affected accounts during the Thursday downtime. Once this rollback is complete, those affected will be able to log in to Home again with all of their other rewards and items intact.

Due to the extra work being carried out, this maintenance period will need to be extended. We will endeavour to have Home back online as soon as possible.

We’ve got a spread of Motorstorming skills – from Andy F who’s very very fast, to me, who can just about get around the track without crashing So there should be something fun for everyone.

We’ll be setting up games on our favourite tracks, including Time Tickers. The event takes place on the EU server at 17:30 GMT until 19:00 GMT.

We’ll also be doing a live commentary on Twitter – check out twitter.com/bigbigstudios for live updates on how the carnage is going.

Race against the World!
We did something a bit different for a PSP racing game – as well as ad-hoc, you can play against anyone in the world with internet multiplayer. You can race on any track in the game against 6 people, you won’t believe the crazy routes people will take to win! Also there’s Time Ticker where it’s all about staying close to the front of the pack – the first person to 999 points gets the win.

All the races are ranked, and you get rewarded for your achievements – beat a full grid, or more experienced drivers and you’ll rake in extra points. As you get better at racing you’ll climb up the leader board, and probably meet some Legendary players along the way. If you want to see the current standings, take a look on vip.motorstorm.com.

Time Trial Tactics
Another way to compete with MotorStorm players around the world is by working your way up the time trial rankings. The aim is to get the fastest lap on the track of your choice – you can race against the times set by the Bigbig team, or download the communities fastest times and ghosts. The advantage of downloading someone else’s ghost lap is that you can spot all the shortcuts, hopefully find a way to gain a few seconds and then speed ahead.

How to Look Good Racing
So that’s the racing aspect, but true Motorstorm legends want to look good whilst they’re boosting past the opposition. Sure, the default vehicles look good, but if you want to stand out, you need to create your own stylised set of vehicles!

The further you get through festival mode, the more cool customisations you can unlock. If you head over to the Garage and customise your favourite vehicle, you can use all your unlocked parts, sponsor logos and patterns to make something really unique. You can do the obvious, by changing wheels and spoilers, but if you really want to stand out, you can go into more depth.

Freak or Unique?
Not everyone’s spotted the depth of the visual customisation, so here’s a tip: From the Paint Job menu, you can scroll right to choose an interesting Pattern, then press triangle to choose some stand-out colours. If you go right again, you can choose the Side Logo and Top Logo and position them how you want – for example, putting shark’s teeth on the front of the vehicle, or stretching your country’s flag across the rear. Whether you create something sleek and stylish, or aggressively ugly, the design will be unique to you.

And finally, if you really want to stand out online, if you can track down a copy of the Collector’s Edition, you get the exclusive Mirage Rapide rally car to play with.

The Arctic Edge Challenge – Beat the developers!
For those of you who like a challenge, the Bigbig team will be racing online on Motorstorm Arctic Edge on the evening of Wednesday 28th October. There are no physical prizes, but imagine the kudos you’ll get for beating us at our own game! Check the Blog on Tuesday 27th October for the full details.

Skills = Badges
The badges look cool, and are the equivalent to trophies for experts at Arctic Edge. Some of them need skill e.g. Win a race without boosting and others, such as getting a 1080 spin on the bobsleigh corner are just plain fun. The question is – can you get them all?

15 More Maniacs
Some of you may have noticed that the enemy racers in Arctic Edge have real personalities, and you’ll see them challenging you over and over again in the Festival. Each of the 15 maniac racers has their own recognisable vehicles, so when you get smashed into the wall or overtaken on the last corner, you know who to blame!

You may also have spotted the empty slots in your character select, and if you put the time into getting golds in the Festival, all15 characters and all their paintjobs will be yours.

Show it off with Photo Mode
Photo mode is a cool addition to Arctic Edge, here at the team we’ve used a special version to create all the screen-shots you see in the magazines and online. It’s also great for showing off your crazy or cool vehicle customisations – share the pictures with your friends and see who can come up with the most awesome vehicle!

Top Secret – Killzone, Pursuit Force, Wipeout and Little Big Planet in Motorstorm Arctic Edge!
Here’s the big reveal for this post – we’ve hidden some extra special prizes in Motorstorm Arctic Edge for true arctic explorers. We’ve got custom paintjobs for some of the vehicles, game themed stickers and emblems, and even a couple of characters from these classic PlayStation games.

And how do you get a piece of that action? 20 of the 24 tracks in the game have an emblem hidden somewhere in the scenery. You’ll have to look all around you in Photo Mode, and if you can photo 5 of a particular emblem, you’ll get a prize. Watch out though – some of them are really well hidden. Get together with your friends and see if you can track them all down, then get on Multiplayer to show off your rewards!

For our third and final post, we’ll be giving you some tips on customising your off-road vehicle, and how to get the most out of Multiplayer. And remember – I want to see some of those secret paint-jobs in the online games when I get back

What makes the game stand out from the crowd on PSP?

Motorstorm fans will love it because it’s a full-on Motorstorm game you can take anywhere (I was playing it on the train yesterday). Racing fans new to the series will love the sense of freedom (there’s a great choice of vehicles and routes) but there’s still a big emphasis on finding the best line amidst all the explosions, crashes and aggressive mayhem. – Richard Ogden, Game Director

What did you enjoy most about making MotorStorm Arctic Edge?

The fast cars, the women, the rock and roll lifestyle…. were not available while working on Motorstorm (well, the cars were!). With that in mind we had to console ourselves with the fact that we were bringing a widely respected and loved PS3 franchise and making it portable. That alone was quite an awesome task that had the team ready to give 110% to ensure we did the fans, and indeed ourselves, proud.

I personally enjoyed working to the PSP’s hardware specs and trying to push the console to its limits. 6 player On Line and Ad-Hoc races, uploading and downloading of ghost vehicles, 10 racers on screen during single player, over 100 events, full vehicle customisation, Photo Mode, Avalanches, Ice Bridges, Weather effects and so on. A complete Motorstorm package where ever and whenever the players want it. That is what I enjoyed making, and more importantly that it is what the fans expected – and I feel that we have delivered that and more!

– Robert Shaer, Game Designer

Any cool stories from the research trip to Alaska?

After seeing Alaska’s stunning scenery and witnessing the unpredictability of the terrain and weather we were certain that this was the perfect location for the next Motorstorm festival. The Denali range contains one of the highest mountains in the world, being set down by our plane amongst some the peaks thousands of feet above sea level, in the middle of winter was a very memorable moment, especially as we watched out ride home disappear off in to the distance without us! Luckily he came back, and we used our thousands of stunning photos as an inspiration for the game.

– Matthew Brown, Environment Artist

As you can see, the team is really proud of Motorstorm Arctic Edge. If you’re lucky enough to own a copy, we’ll be telling you about some hidden secrets in our next post. If you just want to check it out, look out for the demo hitting PSN soon!

Simon Bursey, Art Director – Motorstorm Arctic Edge, Bigbig Studios

Time for a PlayStation Home update…

First up, as promised a few weeks back, the MotorStorm Monument Valley Campsite personal space will, as of tomorrow, be winging its way into PlayStation Home and on sale at the Estates store in the Shopping Centre.

This mesa-top hideaway has its own crackling fire, MotorStorm caravan and a view of the pumping MotorStorm festival across the Valley. Check out the teaser trailer of this personal space below:

Not only that, but there’s also a raft of MotorStorm furniture available to customize the campsite including a sofa constructed from a mangled skateboard, the clapped out car seat from one of the original MotorStorm vehicles and a smouldering BBQ cunningly fashioned from an old oil-drum and other non-descript pieces of junk. Check out the screenshots below:

The good news is that this brand-new personal space will be available for a reduced price of €2.99 and all 16 furniture items will be available for €0.99.

Now there’s no excuse not to upgrade your Harbour Studio to something a bit more ‘rugged’ …

Next up, tying in with the release of Wolverine on Blu-ray, we have these limited edition SCEE-exclusive adamantium claws for your avatar available in Home Threads. Check out the screenshots of this awesome item below:

These will only be available for a limited time, so make sure you jump in and get hold of a pair…

Also, the Resident Evil 5 Studio Lot will be updated to include a new mini-game, the BSAA Training Mission and Adam’s shop, check out a screenshot of the updated space below:

We are also releasing a new batch of MySoti t-shirts, plus the V-Store will have an update, including some awesome board shorts for your avatar and some new funky t-shirts; a few highlights from the V-Store are below:

Finally, we will be removing the SingStar Rooms: VIP while it’s re-decked for its next event and the MotorStorm Sphere teaser space will leave PS Home as of tomorrow – watch this space for more info on its replacement…

Oh, and we’ll also be launching a brand new space tomorrow. But you’ll have to log into Home to check it out…

See you tomorrow, wielding some Wolverine claws, when PS Home re-opens.

iELL / Elliott

***
Hi guys,
Just to let you know (if you haven’t spotted it already or been on the EU forums) that Home’s maintainance downtime for today has been postponed. All updates, as per the blog, will however be made tomorrow.
Thanks for your patience.
iELL
***

Alan McDermott, Audio Manager at Evolution Studios, explains what he looks for when creating the soundtrack for a MotorStorm Festival, and what The Festival is all about.

I’m Alan McDermott and I’m here to tell you what goes into picking music for MotorStorm. This is not easy to describe. MotorStorm has one of the most eclectic and carefully chosen soundtracks for a racing game around. There’s a specific reason for this: MotorStorm is more than just a racing game. It’s a Festival of racing, music and partying hard.

The only thing that you need to understand in order to create a set-list for a MotorStorm Festival, is that MotorStorm is a festival of the insane. Thousands of people descend upon a completely unsuspecting location once a year and tear it up, some watch, some race, but all of them party. There’s no way to control what happens when thousands of fired-up lunatics unite in the same space. It’s a living, breathing event. It’s hard to call how it plays out. Anything could happen.

The only thing you can go on is a good understanding of what The Festival is, but when you get a feel for what it is, the hardest part of picking the soundtrack is done. So what is it..?

I can tell you that it’s Dirty. That it’s filthy. That it’s raucous. It’s full of attitude. It’s relentless. It’s a nihilistic tour de force. It’s fuelled by adrenaline. It’s chaotic. It’s angry. It’ll rip the doors off your car to cool down. It’ll pawn all your mom’s jewellery for $1. It’ll fill your bathtub with ketchup and wash the dog in it. It doesn’t care about the noise, and it won’t turn it down even though its 4am…

It’s a place where lunatics unite, to race by day, party by night.

The playlist is available in VidZone right now, so fire it up and check it out!

Go ahead and tell us what you think of the tracks in the games and suggest any artists, DJs, bands, tracks, etc. you’d like to see play The Festival in future.

The next Festival will arrive with an Arctic Edge a little later in the year, and you can bet that the soundtrack will be just as impactful and raucous as those that have gone before it.

Find out more about MotorStorm and get involved with the MotorStorm community.

First up, we have some very special race costumes coming to you straight from MotorStorm Pacific Rift. These new outfits will be available in Home Threads, check out the screenshots below for the male and female flavours…

We also have the launch of a brand-new, never before seen space – the MotorStorm Sphere. Check out the b-roll and screenshots below:

This space will be accessible for a very limited time only (so be quick!). By entering the MotorStorm Sphere you will secure yourself a rare PS Home Reward and the opportunity to see the very first work in progress artwork of a new MotorStorm Space (which will be coming to PS Home later in the year).

That’s not it for MotorStorm though, we will also be bringing you a selection of additional items over the coming weeks – some tantalising screenshots of which are below to whet your appetite…

Next up, we have the Presentation Podium section of the PlayStation Events Space re-opening its doors – this time hosting content from the forthcoming gamescom event in Cologne, Germany. Check out the brand new mini-game “SHAPE BLAST” (for your chance to win a lovely trophy for your Harbour Studio) and keep an eye on the forums for some more information regarding the footage we’ll be streaming into the space…

Finally, make sure you check out the Shopping Centre, there’s been a lovely little apparel update for MySoti, Home Threads and the V-Store.

I’ll be on hand for a bit if you have any pressing questions, otherwise I’ll see you in the PS Home tomorrow.

Thanks

Elliott / iELL

We have the first wave of MotorStorm content swerving into PS Home this Thursday with MotorStorm Pacific Rift Game Launching functionality topping the bill. If you don’t know what Game Launching is, click here for more info on how this great functionality works.

There will be more MotorStorm / PS Home news very soon, however in the mean time, have a look at the screenshots below for a tantalising snippet of some of the great MotorStorm content coming to PS Home over the coming weeks…

Next (and this is very exciting) as of tomorrow, we will be launching a new event in PS Home – the Fat Princess “Quest for Cake”.

Based upon the brilliant PSN title, all you have to do is visit the PlayStation Events Space to join in this very special confectionery quest.

In the fully redecorated space you will find eight pieces of cake, locked away in cages. To unlock the cake and feed your Princess you need to search the space high and low for clues, these clues will give you access to the finest gateaux and, eventually, her majesty’s waistline.

If you do manage to unlock all eight pieces of cake, and feed the Princess, a special PS Home reward will be yours – the Fat Princess’ very own throne for your personal apartment. Here are a few screenshots of the space to whet your appetite…

Last, (but by no means least!) there will be a few additional surprises in tomorrow’s publishing window (particularly revolving around the undead…) so be sure to log-in and check it out

I’ll be around for a while if you have any comments, otherwise I’ll see you in PS Home tomorrow unlocking slices of the finest black forest gateaux.

Best

Elliott / iELL

Make no mistake, this mode is HUGE, it’s packed with unlocks, rewards and trophies, and has been designed to keep challenging you for as long as you want it to. How? Buckle up and I’ll divulge some (but certainly not all) of its secrets!

We were very pleased that the speed race events in Pacific Rift were so fantastically popular – they provided a great change of focus and pace from the Eliminator and Race events, and had the scope for repeated play, and for beating your own best score. While we’ll be the first to admit the formula wasn’t yet perfected, we all felt we had taken the first steps here towards something that would be absolutely stellar as a dedicated single player game mode. We decreed early on though that if we were going to revisit it, we had a few ideas to improve it, and we wanted to make sure it more fully realised it’s potential.

So the basic idea has survived pretty much intact; Start off with a bank of time (10 seconds) that’s counting down from the race start, make your way from one gate to the next as quickly as possible, each gate adding further precious seconds to your ‘banked’ time. Try to record as high a final ‘banked’ time as possible when you fly through the finish gate. So far, so good.

Well, in Speed Weekend, that’s become our qualifying race structure right there; You need to have at least 15 seconds remaining on your clock to qualify for one of the ‘easy’ races, 20 seconds for ‘medium’, and 25 seconds for the ‘hard’ race types. Beat that threshold, and that race is marked as complete on your race card. When you qualify on all 6 events for a vehicle class (2 easy, 2 medium, 2 hard) you’ll unlock a reward for that vehicle class. Work hard, get the unlocks for all 8 vehicle classes, and you’ll get a cool final pack of rewards. If you never play any further than this into the mode, you’ve just worked through 48 events! That’s probably 5-6 hours for the average MSPR player. But wait! For those willing to go the extra distance, that’s just the start….

Once you’ve qualified for an event, you unlock the Main Event version of that race. Now, as well as gates which add time, each race also features barrels strategically placed throughout the track. Any green barrels you hit are going to add extra time, 1 second per barrel. Any red barrels you hit are going to get deducted, 1 second per barrel, once you cross the finish line. This massively opens up the scoring opportunities, and the strategic decisions, facing the player. Do you straightline through those red barrels to save time now and take the penalty later? Do you veer off your racing line in pursuit of extra green barrels? Do you maybe ignore the barrels and concentrate instead on the quickest line between gates?

On bikes and ATVs, there are green bonus time barriers to duck under and buried red barrels that need to be avoided or bunny-hopped over (and duck and hop controls are assigned to L1 and R1 for this mode to make life easier for everyone)! Chances are your moment-to-moment strategy is going to need to accommodate all of those options and more, because your focus now isn’t beating our pre-defined thresholds, it’s beating your friends.

Before each main event the game presents the player with a friends-focused leaderboard. These are the up-to-the-minute times set by people on your friends list; your target time to beat is always going to be the buddy who’s directly above you on the leaderboard. Maybe he got more green barrels than you managed, maybe he went penalty-free and avoided all the red barrels. Either way, you go in, you race, race, race, and when you beat his time, the system automatically sends an update to his machine and next time he turns on the game, he’s going to see that YOU’VE now beaten HIS time! The dreaded red helmet icon on your progress chart tells you that your time has been beaten by one of your mates – which means you’ve slid down your friends leaderboard, and he’s just climbed closer to the top! This is such a compulsive feature, and makes the mode massively addictive – the months of playtesting here in the office have seen friendships turn into bitter, swear-laden rivalries as day after day, week after week, someone pushes the top score that little bit higher – and everyone else gets notified of it, and gets to work trying to beat it. The office swear-box has never had so much cash in it!

For us, this has always been the main focus of Speed Weekend. This is what’s going to keep you playing time and time again, day after day, improving your scores, and beating the best efforts of your buddies. We’ve worked hard to tune the experience so that this inter-friend rivalry as heated and compelling as possible. It soon becomes all about the strategies you pursue in each race; once you realise that you can slam into one barrel and propel it into others to get a ‘domino’ effect going, the scoring possibilities are opened wide. Of course, this also means one green barrel can hit a whole mess of red ones and scupper your best laid plans – so at the highest levels of competition there are multiple factors to take into account and the angle you hit every barrel can make all the difference to whether you’ll be the Top Dog or just a Middling Mongrel amongst you and your buddies.

So, be sure to grab a copy of Expansion:SPEED, a couple of like-minded buddies, and warn your family and friends that you may soon be turning the air blue with foul language! Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines; the Speed Weekend is about to begin…..

In each of the new expansions there are 3 brand new tracks, playable in all online modes, and offline in Time Attack, Free Play, and Split Screen. Let’s take in the holiday brochure descriptions of the new locations, pack by pack.

First off, the Expansion: Speed tracks;

Quicksands
The sea breeze in your racing leathers, the sand in your face, crystal clear seawater in your gas tank … Quicksands isn’t just sun-kissed, it’s sun-smooched-on-the-doorstep-and-put-out-on-the-first-date. When ‘beautiful azure waters’ sits so close to ‘brutal, deadly crossovers’ in the brochure description, you’ll be saying “Wish you were here” while wishing you were somewhere else at the same time.

Darkfire Swamp
No sooner was this swamp-based track completed than Mother Nature decided to do some heavy handed redesign. With fissures opened up along it’s length, long-stagnant pools drained and dried, and deadly molten lava rolling in for some hot pool party action, the MotorStorm organizers decided it was the best redesign EVER.

Engorged
Through an impossibly narrow chasm where sunlight rarely shines, nature’s torrents carve new, untamable routes for her disciples to follow. Big boulders, fast waters and epic vistas; this track satisfies every appetite. One to really gorge on, you’ll need a hunger for survival – get ready to jump to the main course.

Moving onto Expansion: Adrenaline;

Reef Runner
The world’s downright-prettiest boat graveyard, Reefrunner combines hard, fast sand flats, wide coastal shallows and a lightning-fast, foliage-packed jungle sprint. Lightweights should look to hop over the sand banks, heavyweights can tear through the shallows, and everyone else can stick to the middle routes while trying to apply the sunblock and get their swimming trunks on for the post-race beach party.

Brimstone
Spurred on by a love of all things stupid and deadly, the hardcore lunatics united and set up this battlefield of a racetrack. Located inside an unstable volcanic wasteland, Brimstone offers smoking craters, sulphurous lakes, and deadly underground lava tubes. Hell above and Hell below makes this a hell of a good place to stage a race.

Hollowed Earth
At the top of the Island lies the racetrack at the bottom of the world. Built in and around a cavernous and complex natural cave system, Hollowed Earth demands fast reactions, racing discipline, and the ability not to think about the millions of tons of unstable volcanic rock directly above your head. A torch and a mining helmet probably wouldn’t go amiss, either.

As you may well know by now, each expansion pack also re-introduces familiar tracks in entirely new ways. Dubbed as ‘Track Variants’, there are 8 in total, selected from the most popular online tracks, and all given the ‘Volcanic’ subtitle. Rather than just tweaking the tracks by adding a few routes here and closing a few others off there with barriers or fencing, we’ve chosen to theme these redesigns around the idea of the Island going fully volcanic! Imagine lava Bombs spattering the track, erupting volcanoes, ash falling in the air, lava spewing across racing lines, the whole works! Each of these tracks features different degrees of ‘natural interference’ ; at one end of the scale we have The Edge Volcanic, which as an Air track isn’t going to see too much direct Lava interference, but is going to have it’s racing lines significantly affected by huge chunks of molten rocks smashing all over the track. At the other extreme, Earth and Fire tracks like Rift Volcanic and Scorched Volcanic show just what can happen at ground zero when the fires of hell spill out over the raceways! Lava levels rise, mud fields bake and crack, standing water evaporates, and tracks you think you know all too well suddenly provide an altogether different racing experience! We’re hoping you’re going to love the variety and surprises these new tracks provide, and that you’ll all enjoy getting your head around the new strategic racing approaches they require!

Next time, we’re going to take an in-depth look at the massive new single/multiplayer experience that is Speed Weekend, debuting in the Expansion: Speed pack! Keep those motors running!

If you’re one of the fortunate 40,000 attending the LA conference centre on June 5/6, and you’re a MotorStorm fan, then you’ll be able to count yourself amongst the first in the world to witness our 2 new major downloadable content packs, ‘Expansion : SPEED’ and ‘Expansion : ADRENALINE’. Rammed bumper-to-bumper with new content, you’re going to need to set aside some serious time to investigate them both fully.

Expansion : SPEED will be the first off the start line, and screams into view fully tanked up with MotorStorm goodness; 3 brand new tracks (Quicksands, Engorged and Dark Fire Swamp), 3 brand new track variants, 4 sweet new vehicles (sporting 3 paint jobs each) and a whole brand new 48-event Mini-Festival, ‘Speed Weekend’, packed with unlockable rewards, trophies and Microbadges.

Expansion : ADRENALINE is racing along beside it, neck-and-neck, and bringing with it even MORE content! 3 MORE new tracks (Reefrunner, Brimstone and Hollowed Earth), 5 new track variants, 4 more exclusive new race machines (each with 3 liveries to choose from), 6 brand new characters (each sporting 3 different costumes), and a whole big fat stash of fresh new paint jobs for your existing vehicles.

Let’s look at those numbers for a moment – between these two packs, we’re almost DOUBLING the track count in the game, giving you plenty more locations for online races, plenty more Time Attack ghosts to chase, and plenty more settings for split screen fun with your buddies. And you’ve got to believe me guys, these new tracks and the new track variants are some of the best-looking, best-racing tracks we’ve ever made.

So if you’re attending E3 this year, make a mental note to unite with all the other lunatics at the SCEE PSN Stand and be part of the first wave of pioneers to experience all the new content. And if a weekend in LA just doesn’t fit in with your plans, try and make an appointment to call in on VIP.MotorStorm.com, where all the very latest news and updates about the new downloadable content will be breaking first.