Reviews
ATV and quad racing games have not exactly been inundating the Xbox 360. If you don't like MX Vs. ATV then you are pretty much stuck for something to amuse yourself with. The problem is that ATV games have the same issue as motorbike games, they are hard to get right and do convincingly. It is that challenge that Black Rock Studio faced when they created Pure, and have they succeeded? In a word, yes.
Pure is an arcade style off-road ATV (quad bike) game, and it is a welcome change in a year dominated by first person shooters. The World Tour is effectively the single player campaign where you compete in a variety of events in order to accumulate points to increase your world ranking, as well as unlocking components and parts for your ATV. In order to win races and gather points you compete in stages which are grouped depending on engine class. Get a predetermined number of points across all events in a stage and you unlock the next set of events. Complete the last stage engine class and you get awarded a new class of engine to race in the next series of stages as well as an additional ATV slot to store your new class of quad in.
Before you get stuck into the action, you must select a character to race with. There are a few to choose from and you can change character anytime you like, though they all seem a little too ‘Cowabunga dude’ for my liking. The ability to change entire outfits and helmet colour is the extent of character customisation which is a little limited, but you do get to unlock additional outfits in World Tour mode and you only ever get to look at their backs so it’s not really an issue. After character selection you then get to build an ATV. This is an area that is surprisingly detailed for an arcade style racer. It takes a while to build a vehicle but you can use the X or Y buttons to quick build a race or freestyle ATV should you want to skip past the build section, which is missing out on a large part of the fun. You start off selecting a frame, and the type of frame you go for will depend on the type of ATV you want. You can see the effect that highlighted item will make to the vehicles stats with racing quads favouring handling and freestyle quads, favouring tricks. You have to make such decisions on almost every component for your quad. After frame selection, you have to choose items like swing arms, shocks, tyres, wheels, brakes, nose cones, handlebar grips, radiator scoops, and so on. You can also choose the colour of virtually every component, and then there are additional decals that can be added to various bits and pieces with the final task being naming your creation. You can go back and modify your vehicle at any point should you unlock a component that you want to fit. Furthermore, component upgrades become available to you as you progress through the World Tour that allow you to further tweak specific components on your quad. It’s an incredibly involved process and there is a great sense of achievement when you create a new quad from scratch. So now that you have created your beast, its time to try it out.
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