MotorStorm: Apocalypse

It's hardly sophisticated storytelling, but from the prologue (Medal of Honor beach landing) to the epilogue (fleeing the final catastrophe on a bucking and twisting suspension bridge, Halo-style) it certainly takes you on a journey. Writing about F1 2010 last year, I remarked that "racing games are universally terrible at context"; chalk Apocalypse up as another step forward for the genre in this area.

Each race is a unique event and track, with your vehicle decided for you and a condition for moving on to the next. That's it. There are a few Eliminator and Chase variants thrown in but for the most part, it's straight racing on circuits. Many of these change dynamically through the race as quakes, explosions and collapsing buildings close and open the MotorStorm series' trademark multiple routes while serving up gob-smacking spectacle and physics chaos that eclipse even Split/Second's explosive gambits.

It's so eventful and free of repetition that the strict linearity of the Festival isn't at all unwelcome (except when you hit one of the rare but enraging difficulty spikes). It also helps that the no less than 13 vehicle classes – bikes, cars, buggies and trucks of every stripe – have all been created equal. Their strengths and weaknesses are finely balanced and they're all astonishingly quick from the off, with no grinding through slow models to get to the good hardware.

The handling is grippy, bouncy and a little unsophisticated – but MotorStorm never was about precise cornering or artful drifting. Its concerns are route and surface choice, physical jostling (you can barge to the sides), jumping and boost management. Boosting heats your engine to the point of explosion (as does driving through fire), but water butts and pools and even rain can cool it quicker.

Apocalypse ties boosting and jumping together with a new mechanic whereby you can cool your engine quickly by lifting off the throttle while catching air. This small but utterly inspired tweak turns the game into an intoxicating spiritual successor to Excitebike (or, um, Tiny Wings) as you seek to maximise speed by boosting from one ramp to the next in a series of graceful, weightless, rhythmic leaps, cornering in thee dimensions.

Given Apocalypse's reliance on show-stopping shock and awe, its relatively untechnical track design and handling, and the often capricious, crash-prone races, it would be easy to assume that Evolution's latest was playing in the shallow end. But the proof of any racing game's worth is in time trial, and Apocalypse is completely engrossing in this mode. Optimising a route for each vehicle class on each track is a game in itself, involving puzzle-solving as well as skill.

The superb Time Trial also shows how hard Evolution has worked on the online, open-ended half of its game, known as Weckreation. You can download up to three ghosts and race against no less than six; so you could, for example, test yourself against the world best time for that track, the best in your vehicle class, a friend, and your own times in your current class and two others.