The Pacific Rift demo hasn’t been received as well as might have been expected, copping criticism for unresponsiveness in the control system for the cars, the odd glitch and generally unimpressive graphics. Which is a shame because, happily, none of those criticisms can be levelled at the actual game.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that MotorStorm: Pacific Rift should be one of those games which came good late in the development cycle, since Evolution Studios scrapped the original’s engine and started from scratch in order to get split-screen play into the game. But whatever the story, and despite any preconceptions you may have, Pacific Rift rocks.

All of the criticisms levelled at the original have been addressed. The most obvious being the lack of split-screen play, but it’s also feels like a much meatier game, with new game modes making deeper use of the 16 tracks. This time around, loading times have been greatly reduced and if you fail in a race, you can jump into an instantaneous re-run. Its general structure is similar to the original – you need to finish in the top three to earn points (50 for third, 75 for second and 100 for first place), and as you amass points and move up the ranks, you open new challenges, vehicle types and various goodies.

There are four zones: Earth, Air, Fire and Water, each with its own distinct nature. The Earth zone majors on vegetation, which looks spectacular and responds differently according to the vehicle you select – Big Rigs can thrust aside saplings and even plough through tree-trunks, while the likes of bikes and ATVs can be seriously unsettled by even the spindliest, most innocuous-looking greenery. Earth tracks all have narrow, often curving routes through the jungle which require a lot of precision, obviously favouring the smaller vehicles.

When you start the game, and each time you graduate to a new points level, you get a choice consisting of straight Races, but soon start to open up Eliminators and Speed trials, in which you must pass through a certain number of checkpoints -- denoted by red and green smoke, each of which only appears when you pass through the previous one – within a certain time. Obviously, these force you to take a particular route through a track, and they are pretty tough, though very satisfying, to nail first time around. You swiftly learn that, at least in the initial stages, it pays to exercise caution in the Eliminators; get taken out by a truck or whatever, and you’ll be eliminated when you’ve barely got going. It’s also a good idea to take routes around the Eliminator stages that avoid those tricky jumps which could lead to a crash on landing. Eliminators really test your knowledge of each track to the limit.

With the bigger jumps, you can have a heavy landing, which induces a visual effect akin to the blood draining from your brain and a temporary bleeding-out of the sound, rather like when a grenade goes off nearby in a WWII game. Visually, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is unimpeachable. The terrain is better textured and noticeably smoother than it was in the original, as you would expect, and everything looks gloriously crisp, as befits a second-generation PS3 exclusive. Falling water, of which there is plenty, brings about a great wet-windscreen blurring effect. The tracks are all long, full of short-cuts and pleasantly varied; a couple are inspired by (although nothing like identical to) favourites from the original MotorStorm, so occasionally you get a little sense of déjà vu. The AI, like that of the original, is seriously impressive – the more progress you make through the game, the more likely you are to be taken out in seriously spectacular fashion. And those Monster Trucks are pretty good fun – near indestructible (at least as far as driving into other vehicles is concerned) pretty quick and with surprisingly good handling, although if you don’t slow down in one when you hit a sharp corner, it will fall over, Reliant Robin-fashion.

Overall, MotorStorm: Pacific Rift is a more than worthy successor to the original. It answers all the gripes that people had about MotorStorm, looks much more impressive, generally feels like a better rounded and more polished game, but still offers that super-fast, adrenaline-stuffed gameplay. And, of course, you can take on up to three mates in split-screen mode. It doesn’t add anything radically different to the original’s blueprint – but then why would it. If you thought the Pacific Rift demo was sub-par, it’s time to re-evaluate – get out there and check out the full game in all its glory. If you do that, and you were a fan of the original, you’ll soon see that you need to get a copy of Pacific Rift.