Disney Interactive Pure review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 19 Dec 2008

Price when reviewed: £27

Supplier: http://www.amazon.co.uk

Reviewed By: Alec Meer

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

With its disregard for the laws of physics, this quad bike racing game goes beyond its dry concept.

There's nothing more to it than men on machines, but it's entirely fantastical. The most insane crashes can be survived without injury, and pulling reckless stunts in mid-air builds up a nitro boost meter. It's very silly - and it works. There's little need for driving precision, and a crash or two won't rule you out of the running. It's there to entertain more than challenge you.

Unfortunately, it's primarily designed for games consoles. Pure hasn't been optimised very well forPCs; it requires a powerful specification run smoothly, makes numerous reference to joypad Start buttons and takes ages to load. Once you're in the game, though, the sky-high production values wash a lot of the pain away. The appearance of both mud and machines is impressive, and the controls are remarkably intuitive and work surprisingly well on a keyboard as well as a joypad.

There's a minor role-playing element, with you winning new parts to customise your quad bike. Your ride can be built from the ground up, with many of the differences being aesthetic rather than practical. Inevitably, it gets a lot trickier as the game progresses. There's an increasing emphasis on lightning-quick stunt combinations, but for the most part it's entirely happy to let you rough 'n' tumble your way through its 30-odd tracks. Unsurprisingly, these are most fun when raced online against up to 15 other bikers.

It's not a game with much variety on offer, but its blend of racing, posing and often spectacular scenery makes it the sort of mindless fun we so rarely get to enjoy on our PCs. It may be shallow and stupid, but it does it in exactly the right way.

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