MotorStorm: Apocalypse

"We're hoping the match-making's going to sort out the real gulf between the players, but say they're having an off night, it still gives them another way to earn experience," says Barlow. "But also it's just another way of sticking one over on your mates, which let's be honest, is really fun."

It's a neat trick to be sure, but in Wreckreation, Evolution has saved the best for last. The mode creator will allow players to write their own race rules, controlling dynamic events, conditions and scoring systems. Made in response to the way the MotorStorm community has created its own modes by consensus on the forums, the mode creator attempts to formalise this improvised creativity, using icon-based "if... then..." sentence constructions to form the building blocks of gameplay.

Barlow's reluctant to define what will be possible with it since that's still being worked out, but he does offer an example. "Let's say an infinite lap on a loop circuit, and say throw a bunch of player-controlled big rigs in and one player on a bike... and that player has to lap as many big rigs as it possibly can. We give the bike all the boost perks, make it the fastest vehicle - you configure all this in the game editor - and the bike's got to keep lapping all these big rigs. We can set up a rule to say if the player passes a big rig, give him a point, and if he gets wrecked out it's game over, give him one life."

Such a mode can then be uploaded, shared and rated on the game's servers. Designs set to open play will be entered in the full matchmaking system. But Evolution doesn't intend them to be static, with any player able to download, tweak and re-upload any mode they like. "We're hoping the community are just going to keep throwing these modes back and forth and tuning them," says Barlow. That includes the official modes that Evolution will write with the system to prove the pudding - it already has Eliminator and Hot Lap set up.

Evolution is hoping to use features like the mode creator to grow and cement the MotorStorm community, which, according to Southern, has been small but very vocal and committed to date. "It's the future really, not just for videogames but for an awful lot of popular entertainment," he says. "This idea that you go as mainstream as possible is a misnomer. Find a sizeable, loyal audience and over-deliver to them as much as possible."

If that sounds modest, it shouldn't. "Over-deliver" is a phrase Southern uses all the time, especially about the shooters and action-adventures that he feels have dominated this generation while racing games have been left stuck in a rut. As far as reversing this trend is concerned, Southern's hopes for MotorStorm: Apocalypse are sky-high.

"We absolutely believe that we're going to be the most ambitious [racing] game of this generation," he says. Having its thunder so rudely stolen has inevitably masked that ambition, and after playing this flashy but constrained demo, we're still anxious to find out where MotorStorm's purposeful new direction meets its free-roaming past. But the more you talk to the men making it, the sharper that ambition comes in to view, in the most unexpected places. It may look familiar, but MotorStorm: Apocalypse will be a racing game unlike any other: that much is certain.