MotorStorm RC: Pro-Am Festival DLC Impressions

MotorStorm RC’s defining, lasting beauty surely lies in the competition – the closely fought battles on the tarmac, the live updates and intelligent UI, all key to the game’s retail and critical success. It was, is, the PS Vita’s least expensive game and – some may say – amongst its best. Certainly, we thought so when we reviewed it last month and scored it 9/10, and absolutely stick by that score: MotorStorm RC is great.

Is a matter of weeks too soon for major DLC, though?  You might argue these new tracks and vehicles are comparatively tardy given that the game shipped alongside a smattering of additional cars and unlocks – and when you consider the price (just £2.49) we think it’s actually arriving at just the right time to give the game a boost.

The Pro-Am DLC, which is actually a 100kb unlock that activates content already downloaded, is released on PSN tomorrow and opens up another complete festival to the right of the one based on Apocalypse, which is both sensible and indicative of the modular nature of the game.  It’s fully functional, with an overall leaderboard (and time) and, of course, the individual scoreboards that make the game so addictive.

The four tracks, themed around a skatepark, are a marked diversion from the ones in the mainline game – for starters they feel smaller, tighter and more handmade, but also offer much more verticality in the sense that, being a skatepark, they’re full of jumps, bumps and even the odd quarter-pipe.  It’s a tenser, more fragile affair when the cars are skyward so often, with one slight nudge throwing you well off course.

Learning new tracks means that the muscle memory that helped you through the original courses is gone, and retraining for the hairpin corners and drifting on plywood means that there’s the same joyful difficulty curve that we’ve missed since MotorStorm RC first came out.  The tracks are all great, though, even if the theme is slightly over done.

And, perhaps rightly, the game assumes that you’re already half decent at the core RC game – time trial medals are less trivial, races are harder and buggies make their appearance far earlier than expected.  Indeed, the courses are flipped within a couple of events, too, which further halts the rote track learning that the top scores and times will demand.

There’s still the odd framerate issue with the camera zoomed out, but at £2.49, this is a bargain whichever way you look at it and downright essential for fans of the original.

Review code was unavailable, so my personal thanks to TSA reader Carl for his code.

11 Comments

  1. I’ll be getting this.
    I’m still crap at it though.

  2. These tracks look there best yet. Nearly finished the original stuff. Just hate all the ice tracks! Pain. In. The. Ass.

    • The key to the ice tracks is to try and keep to the snow (where possible) as there’s better traction.

  3. Looks great but I want to finish getting all three medals on the super car hot laps first. Then there’s getting the times down too. If I can do both those things, I’ll snap this up!

  4. No problem mate, good to see it went to good use! The DLC sounds great and i look forward to giving it a go. Not played the game since platinuming it, so this will pull me back in for more great competition :)

  5. Platinumed the Game and already done the PRO-AM
    Great game, and although can be done In well under an hour, well worth £2.49

  6. I love Motorstorm RC and will be buying the DLC as soon as it’s available.
    However, I think it’s interesting that the ‘new’ tracks are in fact an unlock code, implying they were already in the main game.
    The difference here though is the initial game is perceived as such good value for money and the DLC is priced at a reasonable level means that no one is really going to complain.
    Obviously I’m comparing this situation to that of SFxTekken when you have to pay full price (~£40) for the game, then £4ish for each “new” character which was also already in the game.
    Maybe I’m being a little hypocritical here in favouring Motorstorm but I think price has to be a huge determining factor for everyone.

    • Well the trophy list for both Pro-Am and Carnival festivals were already in the game from the start, so expect to see the Carnival DLC as another 100 kb unlock in a few weeks.

  7. Sorry, am I the only one who can’t see the DLC in PS-Store ? or is this normal ?

    • It’s not been released yet is all.

  8. Currently nr 8 pn the global leaderboards on this DLC. By far my favorite Vita game so far

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