When it comes to racing games, my biggest gripe is the computer-controlled cars I race against. If I'm driving to the best of my abilities, hitting lines perfectly and braking in all the right places, my artificially intelligent opponents typically perform just as well, making it impossible to get more than a car length or two ahead of them. Then, if I happen to crash, the rest of the field usually slows to a crawl to let me catch up. Once I get within a few vehicles of the lead again, everyone else picks up the pace, and it's back to the first place stalemate. It's in turn humiliating and frustrating.
A much more satisfying racing game is one in which racing exceptionally well ends in a convincing victory, racing a little sloppily results in hard fought battles, and racing poorly places you so far back you can't even see the second to last place vehicle. These games are rare.
To my surprise, however, Disney Interactive's new fantasy ATV racer, Pure, is just such a game.
I found that if I followed the quickest line on each course, pulled off all of my jumps, and never crashed, I usually finished a comfortable three or four seconds ahead of my nearest competitor. If I didn't know the track or missed a few jumps, I'd have difficulty placing in the top three. And if I bit the dust a few times and took slower routes, I'd be lucky not to finish dead last.
With few exceptions-such as the occasional rider who would obstinately try to follow a particular line despite my locking wheels with him-I could hardly tell that my opponents' intelligence was rooted in silicon chips rather than grey matter.
And as the game progressed, they got even smarter. By the last of the ten stages in the World Tour mode, making just a couple of mistakes would send me plummeting to the back of the pack, with virtually no hope of ever overtaking the leaders. This is as it should be in a racing game's final events, when the player ought to know the tracks and possess skill with the controls.
It's worth noting that I'm no sadist. I rarely choose to play on the hardest difficulty levels of any games, and I'm not ashamed when I choose the easiest. But I never want to sense that a game is pandering to my performance. I always want to feel fairly challenged; rewarded when I perform well, with a real risk of failure if I don't. And that's exactly the kind of experience Pure provides.
I've never ridden (or even had a desire to ride) an ATV in my life, but I'll be damned if Pure isn't in contention to become my favourite racing game of 2008. If you have any love for the genre (and typically find your artificially intelligent competitors as aggravating as I do), keep it in mind the next time you walk into your local game shop.