I got the opportunity to sit down with Jamie Brayshaw, the Community Manager at Evolution Studios and ask him a few questions about MotorStorm Apocalypse.
As Community Manager, Jamie is the voice of gamers within the studio and the online spokesperson for the studio externally, and collaborates with both to create quality and entertaining communal experiences through videogames.
Jamie had a lot of to share with us about the development of the game, and some of the great new features. Take a look at what he had to say below.
Q: When did you begin working on MotorStorm Apocalypse?
The concepts and prototypes that would eventually become MotorStorm Apocalypse began with a small team midway through developing MotorStorm Pacific Rift early in 2008. They looked at ways in which the theme of destructible, multiple-route race tracks on vastly different road surfaces could be taken in a new direction – one which went further than anyone had seen in a racing game before.
Q: Obviously the game plays great with a gamepad. What can users of a steering wheel expect?
I’ve had the pleasure of playing MotorStorm Apocalypse with a steering wheel, on a true stereoscopic 3DTV, and it blew me away. The intensity of the extreme racing conditions is amplified, and reading and reacting to the race as it changes feels much more immersive. I think that’s the key difference: when you’re racing with a force-feedback steering wheel you can feel every hair-pin drift, every rivalry collision, every earthquake tremor… By the time you reach the finish line your knuckles are white and your adrenaline is pumping. You feel like you survived the race. It’s the sort of feeling you get when you’re holding onto a lead in the last lap and you know that your rivals are close behind you, but with a steering wheel you get the feeling every time.
Q: What are the most important enhancements in the 1.05 update?
Alongside the addition of Logitech steering wheel support, the update makes it easy for you to share your personalized vehicles, so that you can show off your design skills or simply make sure your racing team looks the part out on the track. The biggest feature we’ve added allows you to design your own racing events with the “Mode Editor” and then race with your friends on the PlayStation®Network.
Q: Can you tell us a little about the “Mode Editor”
By design, MotorStorm Apocalypse has a carefully crafted driving model, realistic physics and destruction, and three traditional racing event types (Races, Elimination races and short sprint races called Chase events): The “Mode Editor” gives you the freedom to change any of these aspects to shape the racing experience to suit your play style: whether you want to control which vehicle types can race together; fine-tune the suspension damping; restrict turbo boosting; disable traction control; play with “moon gravity”; or anything else within the realms of the editor. The level of control it offers over how you play will make sure that you can keep it fresh for as long as you want.
Q: When you and your dev team find yourselves running on empty, what is your fuel of choice?
When you do something that you really have a passion for it’s rare that you find yourself running on empty, but the occasional breath of fresh air, sunlight and outdoor activity definitely helps when you spend a lot of time in a studio. And pizza.
