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There's something I never particularly understood about my general dislike of off-road racing games, something I heretofore believed was inexplicably indefinable. Yes, in everything from Sierra's SODA Off-Road Racing to Sony's ATV Offroad Fury series, I could race upon gritty, chassis-attacking courses in cactus-ridden locales around the world. But something was missing...what the F was it? When I first played MotorStorm, Sony's off-road racing game for the PlayStation 3, I realized almost immediately what those other games were lacking. It was not so much the realm of realism as it was about romanticism: The PS3 graphics on an HDTV so vividly and melodramatically placed me in the grand desert, I felt I could taste the scorched dirt that my souped-up vehicle kicked up as I hurried through an ancient canyon. Along with that romanticism came something just as important -- the feeling of adventure, the wind on my pasty face, the sweat on my worried brow, the about-to-lose-my-lunch fear. While I spend a lot of time sitting on my sorry ass playing games, I do some extreme travel writing, too, which has me flying to South Africa and diving for great white sharks in the cold winter water near stinking, seal-populated Dyer Island. I expect the same kind of excitement when I travel into a game; I expect to shiver with a sense of escapism, panic and freedom.

Within the action of MotorStorm is something exotic, mysterious and, occasionally, full of the kind of wide, glorious expanse that's not unlike the life-affirming feeling I get when viewing painter Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer above the Sea and Fog." What makes MotorStorm work for me even more is the breathless feeling of excursion I get almost every time I ride and compete. Ensconced within my vehicle, I have a mad look of glee on my visage, and I imagine that Jack Kerouac is next to me drinking from a goatskin and Quentin Tarantino is in the backseat, screaming road-rage-filled directions and losing his remaining strands of hair as I lightly sideswipe an 18-wheeler.

While MotorStorm isn't perfect by any means, it features a very worthwhile melding of intense, ever-evolving artwork with technology obviously programmed by persnickety individuals who are anal about every detail, especially the way the vehicles move and the courses change. So, when Sony manufactures a phrase like Real-Time Deforming Terrain to describe the way the racing courses alter constantly with each lap, with new ruts and freshly-loosened earth, I don't mind the pseudo-scientific wording. The game works well, so let 'em have their effete jargon.

Before you begin, you'll choose a ride from any of seven vehicle classes, including bikes, ATVs, rally cars or big-ass trucks. Then, get your motor runnin' and head out on the muck-encrusted, off-road highway. Initially, you'll have two vehicle choices in each category. The rest of the 20 cars, bikes and trucks? You'll have to unlock them by winning races. The Sixaxis is especially versatile as a controller. No, it's not a steering wheel, but it acts like one on TV, er, when working with your TV screen.

The offline single-player portion of MotorStorm is all about jump-starting your emotions, stoking the fires of insult and anger within your soul like a software devil whispering sweet evil into your ear. While a fairly devious artificial intelligence on the part of the racers does everything short of flipping you the bird, your focus should be on passing other vehicles with speed or by nudging them just enough so they'll spin, roll or crash. You can watch the spectacular results of the crashes with a rear view, too, but it just wastes time in your quest to win the MotorStorm Festival. Here, a simple riff on a cliché becomes a truism. Keep your eye on the off-road to become