Damn, this game has me conflicted.

Awesome racing!  But only eight (highly detailed and complex) tracks.  Near-lagless online play that feels balanced and exciting!  But no split screen.  Stunning graphics!  But limited sound options and only viewable in 720p.  Vehicles so detailed they could star in their own individual titles!  Load times that make the baby Jesus cry.

Motorstorm certainly does serve as an excellent example of the visual power of the PS3, no question.  The demos, even the most recent of them, feel like alpha-release compared to the impressive attention to detail of the full game.  Mud doesn’t just kick up from the tires of the vehicle ahead of you, it spatters back down in a gloppy mess over the hood of your truck (saying that the hood hasn’t been torn off in a rear-end collision that left your opponent a rusting hulk at the bottom of an Arizona canyon) and windshield, partially obscuring your view for a few seconds.  And the pretty explosions aren’t just reserved for you, expect to see at least two or three massive wrecks during each race, especially when multiple vehicle classes are in tight spaces.  It's not the prerendered look of the infamous E3 video, but it does perfectly capture the spirit and intensity that the footage promised.

There are about a half-dozen vehicle classes in the game, ranging from massive big rigs and dump trucks to dirt bikes and ATVs, with monster trucks, rally cars, and buggys  adding more variety to the mix.  Given that each track has multiple marked routes and possibly dozens of lines each tailored to particular vehicle classes, good players have a serious chance at winning with most of them, even when the AI catch-up is turned off (I recommend leaving it on in single player, it keeps other cars near you and the action far more intense on-screen).  Heavier vehicles have low acceleration and momentum that carries them through mud pits with ease, lighter vehicles will tear across hardpacked dirt and rock at high speed but generally flounder in the shorter, straighter, muddier sections of the course.  And of course, smaller vehicles are more likely to be torn apart like tissue paper if one of those big rigs hits them with any serious force.

Online play is pretty damn fun, and as one of the most anticipated titles on the system the servers are packed.  But being that the host has to manually restart the game each round, this means that if he suddenly feels nature’s call the rest of the players could be left waiting several minutes until the game starts.  Also, much like Resistance, Motorstorm is a delightfully lag-free experience.  Given the lag problems on some other games, I’d love to see some of these studios offer up whatever code magic they employ here to other developers.

The problems arise in terms of variety:  While there are multiple obvious and hidden routes to each, it doesn’t change the fact that there’s only eight tracks. No split-screen multiplayer, and while looking at the game gives a good argument that doing so could result in framerate and visual quality sacrifices, I want to race against my brothers, or my friend who just got back from college halfway across the state on spring break!  This is tolerable, not acceptable, for a first-gen release.  But future omissions of the most basic form of multiplayer in any racing title will be utterly insufficient.  Finally, load times, especially when choosing a vehicle, tend to be downright bad.  It can be upwards of fifteen seconds between choosing an event to race in and choosing your vehicle, and then another fifteen to twenty seconds on top of that to fully load the map. This really pulls me out of the high-energy experiences of the races themselves, and loading in complex 3D backgrounds highlighting the Motorstorm festival itself during menus means that you’ll spend a lot more time looking at loading screens than you want to.  The payo is great, in the end, but it still seems ather unnecessary.  One small mercy is that the actual initial startup load isn’t long at all, jut the levels and especially the vehicles.  Finally, sound always feels either way too looud or way too quiet, and the odd choices for setting levels mean that it's hard to balance without a lot of needless trial and error.  They really couldn't give me full 0-100 control over the music and engine noise levels?

Motorstorm is a great racing game in a lot of ways, but has some basic flaws that detract from the experience.  If you want some highly entertaining arcade-style racing on the PS3, it could be for you.  But if you want to sit down and play with friends and family, you may want to look elsewhere or give it a rent first.