MotorStorm - updated hands-on

MotorStorm's structure really drives the differences home. Instead of just giving you a series of tracks and letting you figure out the best vehicle to tackle them with (or just sticking with a favorite), the game is divided into 21 "tickets," each consisting of one to four races that force you to use a specific vehicle type. The same tracks tend to get lobbed at you repeatedly, but they're so diverse that so far this doesn't really feel repetitive. Especially not when cutting through them in a fresh vehicle opens up new strategies, shortcuts and avenues of exploration.

If you've played the demo, you've already seen one of the courses - the high, hazard-filled Rain God Mesa - but you can expect a much wider variety from the rest of the tracks, which go by names like Coyote Rage, Dust Devil and The Tenderizer. These tend to be broad and fairly open, with terrain that ranges from superslick mud plains to rocky cliffs. Whatever the ground is like, you can expect your competitors to kick up a generous helping of dust and mud to splatter your windshield and obscure your view - that's part of why it's so important to pull ahead of everyone else. There's plenty of debris to crash into as well, but each track also packs in cool features like giant steel sculptures, hidden jumps, buildings, wreckable piles of old cars and - in the case of Dust Devil - a colossal wooden ramp that sends you crashing through a bunch of huge steel signs.