This gem of an arcade racer is the pleasant surprise of PlayStation Vita’s bulging and generally high-quality launch line-up. It’s also an absolute steal at under a fiver from the PlayStation Store (or six euros, but sadly no dollars yet – it’s due for release in North America on March 6th). But that’s not even the half of it. MotorStorm RC is a revival of a sadly neglected sub-genre of racing games – and a bite-sized vision of Sony’s cross-platform future, because it’s on PS3 too.
It’s also a valiant rally from Evolution, the Sony-owned studio whose loud and proud MotorStorm: Apocalypse was all but sunk by a terrible real-life coincidence last year. Humbled but undaunted, a small team at Evolution shrunk the MotorStorm series’ off-road vehicles down to radio-controlled models for this top-down racer, and remade its epic locations out of cardboard boxes, mud, tyres and chalk.
The result looks and plays a lot like the classic Micro Machines, or Mashed if you have a shorter memory (or, if you have a slightly longer one, that magnificent arcade cab of the late 1980s, Ivan ‘Ironman’ Stewart’s Super Off Road). You look down on a compact track from above and steer little cars around it, firing them off ramps, round banking and over bumps and around hazards.
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RC cars are a perfectly natural fit for this play style. On Vita, the default (and best) control scheme even mimics a radio control handset, with throttle and brake/reverse on the right stick. You can set these to buttons or triggers if you prefer, but being digital, they don’t offer the same feel or fine control.