The best racing game I've played all year.

Disney Interactive and Black Rock Studio's have come together to create my newest video game racing obsession, the off road trickster title Pure. It's easily my favorite in the recent gen of off road racers, combining arcade style visuals and aesthetics with a trick system that's more akin to Tony Hawk or SSX than anything I've played before.

First of all, on the surface, Pure is just damn pretty to look at. Beautiful visuals, well rendered riders, and some astonishing locations make this game a gem to show to the HD crowd, and if you thought titles like GRID were impressive, well, they are! But so is Pure, especially considering the amount of stuff going on with 16 different racers tearing up a completely malleable racing surface across sand, mud, and even snow. I never encountered any framerate drops, which is pretty impressive, and everything runs smooth, with no hint of tearing that the average player is going to notice. Second of all, it's a blast to play. Seriously, the controls might feel a bit awkward at first, especially considering the various options you have for tricks (and sometimes the amount of buttons to press), but once you get into the hang of it, it'll feel like second nature. I didn't even get accustomed to using the RB/LB to modify my tricks until about halfway thru the game, but once I did I found myself using it all the time. The only thing I have yet to really get a handle on is combining forward or backward rolls into my repertoire, but I have a feeling that I'm on the cusp of enlightenment with that.

The career mode of Pure is set up thru 10 events with multiple race types in each one. In reality there are only three different races you'll compete it, which is probably light in relation to other titles. Sprint races consist of 5 laps, and they're much shorter than the standard Races, which are made up of 3, much longer laps. Finally, there's Freestyle, which has you competing with other racers scores, and the tracks are typically set up to allow you the ability to chain multiple tricks together throughout the course, allowing you to build up a beefy multiplier with enough skill. Occasionally tracks are reversed, but you will find yourself visiting multiple locations over and over, usually with the track layout altered, or the starting/finishing line adjusted. You could say this becomes a bit repetitive, and you're probably right, but if you're like me you'll be having so much fun with it you'll hardly notice that you've seen that dirt ramp before.

The trick system in Pure is pretty large, in part due to the tiered button system in place. When you begin a race, you can only pull of tricks by holding down the A button while in the air, and pushing a direction on the left analog stick. Each direction pulls off a different move, which you can then modify by using the RB or LB. There's a meter at the bottom right that begins to fill as you successfully land tricks (you have to actually land your ATV safely), and this meter also servers as your boost. As you fill the meter, you start to unlock more tricks, by using the B and finally the Y button. Once you max the meter out, you can then perform a special trick by using both sticks, and the characters that you can select from all have a different set of special tricks to perform. It doesn't take long to build this meter up, so within a minute you're able to pull off a variety of moves, all of which you'll need to learn so you can build up your boost, which becomes integral to helping you win races.

In Freestyle mode, you don't have to worry much about coming in first by laps, instead you have a visible combo meter and score that tells you how you compare against the other 15 racers. Once you land your ATV after performing a series of tricks, this combo meter will stay in play for a short while, allowing you try and regain some air and add more moves to the meter. Also, small tokens come into play with Freestyle mode that can add more multipliers to your score, or max out your boost all at once. Freestyle mode is a lot of fun, both online and off, and while there are probably more races in the career mode, for me Freestyle mode was easily the best part of the game.

When you begin the career mode you also need to build your first ATV, taken from about 24 different parts, with the majority of these parts impacting not only the way your ATV controls or accelerates, but also your top speed, boost, and ability to pull off faster tricks. Because of these different parts and factors, you'll need to create at least three different ATV's (you eventually get 10 slots), one for each type of race or event. Along with that, you start off with a D engine class, but eventually make your way up to A. You can only race a D class engine ATV in D class events, and likewise for all the other ranks, so you do have to micromanage your rides a bit more than most arcade racing titles will have you do. It's not difficult to navigate the garage screen though, and there are a lot of parts that are strictly cosmetic, so you won't need to switch those out nearly as often.

Multiplayer is pretty solid, and I never had any issues finding a match. It supports a total of 16 players online, but I didn't come across too many full rooms just yet. You can opt to do any of the three race types, and select your tracks as well. Racers here can use any engine class they choose as well, so beware if you're entering in with a small D class ATV against a group of the much faster A types.

The main career mode might feel a little short if you're willing to just do the bare minimum to skate by and get thru each mode, but the real challenge comes from mastering the tracks and trying to max out your score, something that you'll definitely be challenged to do online, which is a great post game training ground for the game.

All together, I absolutely loved Pure, and while I've played a fair share of decent off road racers in the past couple years, nothing compares to Pure in my opinion. I'm absolutely looking forward to a sequel, and I hope more players become aware of this release so we can get that sequel locked in relatively soon. Pick this one up, whether you've heard about it or not, I can't imagine you'd be disappointed.