The title “PURE” is perfect for this game. While other offroad series have gotten a bit bloated with too many vehicle types (none of which play all that well), Disney Interactive and Black Rock Studios sought to create the best possible racing game around just one discipline – ATVs. And they more than succeeded. PURE is gorgeous looking, fast paced, accessible, and just plain fun to play. Find out all of the details right here.
Quick Hits
- Title: PURE
- Platform: Xbox 360
- Publisher: Disney Interactive
- Developer: Black Rock
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: ATV racing
- Pros: Gorgeous graphics; fun, smooth gameplay; neat trick system; challenging
- Cons: Maybe a bit too challenging; pretty short; manually building ATVs is pretty useless
As far as modes go, PURE is pretty straightforward with the normal assortment of single and online multiplayer modes you would expect. The real meat of the game comes in the World Tour mode where you can build your own ATVs and then race them through 10 tiers of increasingly challenging races. Building ATVs is a pretty big part of PURE, and the depth offered here is astounding. You get to customize literally everything on your quad from the frame to the suspension to the sprockets and more. This depth is a bit of an illusion, however. The game offers a quick build option for a freestyle or racing bike, and pretty much your only way to get through the World Tour is to simply let the game build the best bike possible for you. All of the customization seems cool, but you don’t spend much time looking at your bike out on the track and the game automatically builds you the best bike possible anyway, so it all seems a bit pointless. The World Tour mode itself is actually fairly short and a dedicated player can get through it in just a couple of days. You won’t be able to win every race in that time (the game gets crazy difficult), but you’ll earn enough points to advance through the stages and see the end.
Gameplay
Disney InteractiveThe gameplay in PURE is deceptively simple, and the game is fairly intuitive and accessible. The core gameplay is just like most ATV/MX games. Right trigger is the gas, left trigger is brake, and you preload the suspension before you go off of jumps by moving the left stick up and down. You do tricks by holding a direction on the stick while you are in midair and pressing the A, B, and Y buttons and special tricks by pressing the left and right bumpers together. The trick system is interesting because it is tiered (the big tricks aren’t available to begin with) and it is also tied to your turbo boost. By doing tricks you build up boost. As you build boost, you unlock the ability to use the B, Y, and then special tricks. Higher tier tricks give you more boost than lower tier tricks. So the game is a constant struggle to decide whether you want to use the boost for more speed on the track or to hold onto it in order to pull off the bigger tricks. It is a pretty fun system that really keeps you thinking about every move you make. One other thing I want to say about the core gameplay is that compared to most ATV/MX games, it is very easy to play. Landing tricks, even huge tricks that see you flying hundreds of feet in the air as you jump down mountainsides, is very easy. You don’t have to worry about landing at some impossibly perfect angle just so you don’t crash like other games. This puts the focus on speed and fun, which is obviously a good thing.
One issue I do have with the game, as I mentioned above, is that the difficulty increases pretty fast in World Tour mode. You’ll win the first tier races with no problems, but after that it all becomes much more of a struggle. You have to run events pretty much mistake free in order to actually win because the A.I. (the leaders, anyway) run perfect races and take all of the best shortcuts. If you don’t run a perfect race and get a little too wild in your search for more speed, however, that is where the problems and real frustration really sets in. The middle of the tracks is, obviously, clear and easy to race on. But as you get closer to the edges of the track – and as any racer knows the faster you go the wider you have to take turns – there are all sorts of little things that reach out and grab you. Turn even a millimeter too wide and rocks and trees and fences and everything else will stop you dead in your tracks. The first half of the game or so you don’t really run into these issues, but as you search for more speed in the later stages the game gets pretty darn frustrating instead of fun. You can still finish the game just fine, but don’t expect to win every event without a lot of work. Challenge is definitely a good thing in games, but when that challenge feels too cheap and unfair and frustrating is where the problem comes in.
Disney InteractiveGraphics
PURE is an amazingly gorgeous looking game. The ATVs are very detailed, the riders look good and all of the tricks are well animated, and the environments you race in are beautiful. The game maintains a steady framerate at all times as well. One of the things that sets PURE apart is not only the great sense of speed but also the sense of vertigo you get when you jump off a high cliff and look down into the valley you are supposed to land in hundreds of feet below, which is just a great feeling.
Sound
The sound is fairly well done. The soundtrack isn’t anything special and the voice acting is pretty average. On the plus side, the bikes sound great.
Bottom Line
Overall, PURE is a solid offroad racer that fans of the genre are really going to love. It looks great, offers surprisingly deep and satisfying gameplay, and is just a good package all around. I do have a couple of complaints, specifically the brevity of the single-player World Tour as well as the rapid ramp up in difficulty. These are far from deal breakers, though, and the core game is still plenty fun enough to keep you entertained and the online play with up to 16 players eases the frustration a bit when you get stuck in single-player. I think race fans can buy it without too many worries, but if you are on the fence I would suggest renting it as the demo isn’t a completely accurate representation of the full game.
