Pure lives up to its name by taking the essence of off-road racing and bringing it fully next-gen. Focusing only on ATVs, the game puts an arcade spin on the genre with insane air, fanciful tricks, and gorgeous visuals. Unlike the simulated-style gameplay of DiRT or unforgiving nature of MX vs. ATV Untamed, Pure aims for accessibility and fun over exacting precision.

We took a run through two tracks: Wyoming and Italy. Zipping through the American Rockies was absolutely beautiful, the sun streaming through pine trees and spotlighting the huge jumps assaulted by the racers. 16 racers crowded the field, which brought up tons of dust and pebbles as they tore up the dirty track. Sunshine and an arboreal forest drew parallels with the Italy track, although here ancient Roman ruins dotted the landscape.

The Italy track was particularly awesome because of a gigantic jump overlooking a crystalline lake. Pure, with its arcade tinge, is as much about pulling ahead of the competition as it is grabbing air and tweaking it. Each venue has a main track and several shortcuts. It's up to you whether you want to veer onto the shortcuts, but there's a trade off. The main track features tons of jumps ideal for tricks, yet the shortcuts are largely flat. Take a shortcut and you might gain on your rival, but you're won't have the opportunity to earn boost.

Pulling off tricks rewards you with boost juice. Naturally, you can use this to gain speed and overtake competitors. You start off by completing basic tricks with the A button, which eventually fill up a circular gauge on the lower-right of the heads-up display. Once this has been filled, you then move to B button tricks. These are more difficult, yet earn you greater boost. Manage enough air and you might trigger a cordova, for example.

As soon as you land enough B tricks, you open up the ability to execute complicated Y tricks. Tweak air, for instance, is harder to land than the B-level cordova. Not only are you working with more complex maneuvers, but landing these advanced tricks becomes a real challenge. The moment you fill up all three gauges, you're then able to access a signature trick. Nail it and you refill your boost juice to get another signature trick.

Getting enough air for these tricks requires more than just launching off jumps. Pure builds on the concept of pre-loading by combining it with boost juice. When in an ATV, you can gain extra height off a jump by pressing forward on the left thumbstick leading into a jump and then quickly pulling back on it. It's not a new concept to off-road racers, but Pure lets you boost during pre-loading to increase your altitude. The amount of air you can grab is unbelievable; in fact, we watched as a rider vaulted over a line of trees to reach a shortcut that simply wasn't available speeding along on the ground.

Nearly two years of development have gone into the game and it certainly looks that way. Individual branches, pebbles, and blades of grass poking up from the wheel-worn dirt tracks can be made out in striking detail. The levels are fantastically large and while we only saw two, there appeared to be a good amount of variety among those listed on the main menu. Deformable tracks would be nice, although the team is focusing more track detail than MotorStorm-like deformable terrain.

The most promising aspect is the support for up to 16 online. That alone sets it apart from other off-road racers. Whether Pure can distinguish itself from the genre even more will be determined later this year, as Disney is planning on an autumn release on the 360, PS3 and PC.