By Every year, there's at least one or two games that escape my game-dar and wind up totally surprising me with how good they are. Last year, it was Call of Duty 4. I didn't think it would happen this year at all, but this week I tried the PURE demo.
I love racing games, but I've never gravitated to any of those ATV Offroad Racing games. There was just something that never appealed to me about them. Pure caught my attention in this month's Official XBox Magazine, which gave it a 9.0 rating (along with an Editor's Choice award). The review really got me with this quote by Dan Amrich: "Pure owes a debt to SSX". Right there, I'm hooked. I've been massively missing SSX on next gen consoles, I can't believe EA hasn't produced a new version (that Wii game doesn't count at all).
Luckily enough, the Pure demo is out this week for both XBox 360 and PS3. It totally fits into the SSX mode of racing, jumping, performing tricks for boost, then boosting through the track to win the race. The trick system is pretty simple, and the more tricks you perform and land without crashing, more advanced trick moves will appear. The graphics in this game are incredible. The demo just includes one racing track, set it Italy, but the colors are really lush and vibrant. The track design is really well done, with multiple pathways to explore in order to find shortcuts or the best hills for a giant vertical leap. The PS3 version looked equivalent to the XBox 360, no word yet on whether the PS3 game supports trophies. Nuff said.
Leave a comment