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!