Pure (Xbox 360)

At X08 this year Pure from Disney Interactive Studios made a pretty big impact. It managed to fly under the radar with minimal hype and press. When we saw it at the show it really seemed to cut through the visual clutter to stand out amongst all the other titles being exhibited so we were keen to see the finished product.

Introduction
The game by Black Rock Studio nestles itself in to a nice niche in your game library for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or Windows. It’s a racing game but negotiating turns efficiently isn’t enough to ace the events. There is a heavy emphasis on tricks and personality in the game too. It’s definitely not a simulation though, remaining very accessible with an arcade feel so anybody can pick it up and play without frustration. That being said, it isn’t shallow either. The game rewards skill, showmanship and risk, allowing it to successfully walk the line between accessibility and rich experience.

Personality
When you initially load up Pure, you get to pick a character. Each rider is different with their own back-story and has a few different tricks up their proverbial sleeves. There are future unlockable characters and unlockable outfits down the road too so you’ll be visiting this menu again in the future. From there you get to really dive in to the experience as you are guided through building your own ATV. You get to pick out each individual component of your custom ride for both functional and aesthetic effects. Of course there are also unlockable parts and upgrades as you progress through the game, allowing you even further customization making each rider and ride distinct. Unfortunately you cannot build your own rider or paint your ride to the extent of Forza Motorsport 2 but again that probably avoids overcomplicating the game. Now, when you get in to a race with your friends you can be sure that your ride and rider will have their own distinct personality to show off as you tear through the events.

Presentation
The visuals in Pure are gorgeous. The game moves quite fast, never really needing to slow down (even with 16 player online games) yet the environments can be breathtaking at times. Occasionally you ride through a jaw dropping vista on one of these huge tracks which can even distract you from the race itself. Luckily this usually happens while you’re in mid air so you have time to enjoy the view. It really does look as great as the screenshots but even better in motion once you see how fast everything is going. The menus are also well presented with an intuitive and simple interface. They use a card theme for most of it which is especially good for indicating things like earned parts and tracks at the end of a race.

The music in this title further helps to imbibe a fun energy in to the game and it’s actually a nice selection of tracks from as disparate genres as house, hip-hop and metal. Jason Avent, game director at Black Rock Studio said that, “Music plays an integral part in action sports games and we wanted to provide the right background to complement the nonstop spectacular tricks and massive jumps in the game. We feel that the songs we’ve included on the soundtrack are ideal to round out the adrenaline rush players will get while playing Pure.” After checking it out first hand, it would seem that Jason nailed it. Usually the Xbox 360’s custom soundtrack feature is a must as racing game soundtracks can get repetitive and even annoying. While you’ll obviously hear repeats with Pure, the audio is well done enough that it doesn’t tend to get as annoying as in some other games in the same genre. Here is a partial track listing just to give you a taste of what to expect.

• The Answer – “Into the Gutter”
• Fred Baker -”Genius Touch”
• Jeff Beck -”Grease Monkey”
• Calyx & Teebee -”Dual Processed” Featuring MC Verse
• The Datsuns -” Maximum Heartbreak’ and ‘Sittin’ Pretty”
• Diet Kong -”With Magic”
• Adam Freeland -” Spin Machine”
• The Futureheads -” Beginning of the Twist”
• DJ Hyper -”We Control”
• Midfield General -”On the Road”
• The Music -”Strength in Numbers”
• My Luminaries – “The Sound of Music”
• Noise Control -”Cities of Dreams’ and ‘Mud Bath”
• Pendulum -”Granite’ and ‘Showdown”
• Pop Levi -”Wannamama”
• Qemists -”Drop Audio’ and ‘Stomp Box”
• The Radishes -”Good Machine”
• Silvertone -”Try”
• The Subways -”Rock and Roll Queen”
• Tapeworm -”Getting Through”
• The Whigs -”Need You Need You”
• Zero DB -”Late in the Day’ and ‘Redline”
• Wolfmother -” Woman”
• We Are Scientists -”Inaction”
• Blindside – “For the Nation”

Gameplay
Overall the gameplay is generally casual. You don’t need to play this game extensively in order to be proficient and competitive online. Most people will be able to pick this up and play it right away. The controls are intuitive and it’s not terribly complicated. It is evident that accessibility was in mind when making pure and while advanced complex maneuvers are possible they aren’t necessary. This is definitely no ATV simulation but instead something which gamers of all skill levels can pick up and have an equally good time with. The emphasis on unlockable content encourages the more avid gamers to push further while the ease of play prevents it from frustrating the novice. As an example, there are almost forty tracks on the disk to unlock.

Conclusions
If you’re looking for a simulation racing game, maybe this is not the game for you but if arcade style extreme-sports action is what you’re in to then this is definitely a game to consider. There is very little media hype around this title and we suspect it will be the sleeper hit this autumn. It just might be the best game nobody’s heard about right now. It’s genuinely fun and avoids the frustration that a lot of casual players can have with typical racing games. They could have allowed a create-a-rider feature, video replays, or a photography mode to further enhance the game but ignoring our features wish-list they have done a pretty good job with everything else. The result is a solid and well rounded game suitable for a casual play through when you don’t want the intensity or complexity of a simulation.