Just looking at the cover of Pure, it's easy to tell that this game is about speed, hang time, and a set of ridiculous tricks that would make the SSX snowboarders blush a little. Using a system of tiered-difficulty stunts, players earn boost by pulling off death-defying tricks that start grounded in reality and climax with your biker of choice performing flips around the ATV itself. Players start by flicking the left analogue stick down then up to jump off a ramp. Once in midair, all you have to do is flick the stick in one of four directions and press a button. The length and difficulty of the trick will fit into one of three difficulty levels. The harder the trick, the more boost you'll earn. Once you fill up your boost meter, you'll be able to perform a special trick by holding down both of the bumper buttons. These exaggerated tricks will reward the player with a boost refill, but can only be performed successfully on the biggest jumps available. The system is easy to pick up and allows novice racers like myself to start getting a little brave with tricks by the end of the first race.

For a game so focused on an arcade experience, Pure features one of the most detailed automotive customization options I've seen this side of Forza Motorsport. For the player that wants to get into the nitty-gritty, Pure allows players to tweak each piece of their ATV from major parts like the engine to purely aesthetic components like the shape and color of a ATV's frame guards. For those that just want to race, the game does a fantastic job of "autobuilding" ATVs with race or freestyle challenges in mind.

These customizations and tweaks are the key to winning though. It's simply not enough to race well, but to also have the right ATV while doing it. While I've found this approach to racing absolutely dull in some games, like Gran Turismo, there was no point in the game where I felt like I didn't have the right parts to assemble the right ATV for a particular race. These customizations also allow the player to put a lot of character into their ATV, even if it doesn't affect your stats. Being able to control the color, shape and style of just about every part of an ATV should allow every player to make the vehicle of their dreams. After selecting a blonde female rider for my avatar I thought that she might need a certain Kill Bill inspired "wagon" to hunt down her foes. Without too much fuss, I was able to quickly put together a hot ride that was just right for revenge.

In a genre that's quick to simply assign the racer with the best time as the winner, Pure does a good job of bending traditional racing rules and the laws of physics to bring something a little new to table. The lengthy World Tour single player campaign takes racers across a variety of gameplay modes over 40+ tracks that vary from the standard "Race" where the winner takes all to a fresh "Freestyle" mode where players collect point bonuses as they pull off as many tricks as they can before their gas tank hits empty.

Unfortunately, not all the gameplay modes are checkered flags winners. It's clear that Black Rock Studios isn't exactly ready to hang up its precision racing roots quite yet with the terribly misplaced "Sprint" races. These races have the pack circling around extremely short tracks (15-25 seconds a lap) with a more banal approach that actively discourages the player from using the trick system that the designers so meticulously crafted. These races felt completely extraneous and I would be hard pressed to find a player that would miss their presence if they suddenly disappeared in a sequel.

Another aspect that I didn't exactly enjoy was the sheer number of racers on track. Each race has the player facing off against 15 other players. While this sounds good on paper, thinner and shorter tracks (like the ones featured in "Sprint") had the AI riders bunching up around jumps and turns. The start of each race got so rough that I had to simply wait for the AI riders to launch ahead of me in non-timed events like "Freestyle." Missing the light combat elements featured in arcade racers of yore like Road Rash, each time I bumped into one of my fellow competitors I found myself yearning for a punch or kick button. If the game is going to force me into tight spaces with these soon-to-be-losers it needs to provide me with a way to remove them from my sight by force. But these are minor aspects on a otherwise polished experience.

The first thing that anyone will notice when jumping into their first race is the game's stunning visuals. You may not be seeing it for long, but each piece of ground that makes up one of the game's tracks is gorgeously detailed with realistically textured vegetation, rocks and terrain. While the tracks are textured with a photorealistic style, their shapes have impossibly gigantic rolling hills, enormous banks, and vertical drops to jump off of. In short, these tracks look like JetMoto would look like if Sony ever got around to making another one. To make the visual package complete, the attention spent to mud literally flying in the air and covering the ATVs and their riders was wonderfully detailed.

Multiplayer modes are a mixed bag here. Those willing to go online will find plenty of tough competition (up to 16 players), even though I wouldn't recommend diving into it first. Since you're allowed to race any ATV from you garage, most of the people riding online will bring some finely tuned machines to the races. Sadly, there is no local (read: split screen) multiplayer. Taking a cue from Geometry Wars 2, each of the races in the World Tour feature integrated leaderboards on the race select screen. Seriously, every point/time-based game needs to incorporate little touches like this. It's not a multiplayer element in the most traditional sense, but quickly became one as I found myself frequently jumping back into races just to beat a friend's time by a few seconds.

On a more personal taste level, I found the game's soundtrack to be ok, but not my thing. I love me some Wolfmother, but the multiple songs by The Datsuns forced me to load up a more "me" custom soundtrack. While not as obnoxious as Need For Speed's Dj Atomika, the game's narrator also had to get turned off. The game's Dolby Digital sound effects were absolute pure-fection and just as crisp and crunchy as I expected my ATV to sound.

At the end of the day, Pure is a game that has its minor faults, but ultimately overcomes them through fun course design, lightning fast arcade pacing and a ton of vehicle customization options. There are oodles of content here to make it a worthwhile purchase for arcade racer fans and the simple control scheme may be enough to convince more casual racing fans to take the plunge. The more that I played the game, the more that I realized the nit-picky imperfections that I saw were the same ones I saw in the initial series installments of JetMoto and SSX. Just as I had to rearrange some of my ATV's parts after placing 4th in my first race, Black Rock has a winner in the making here and it races well out of the gate, but it just needs a few tweaks to grab first place.

7.5 out of 10