I’ve been waiting for a game to really show off the PS3’s graphical powers. There’ve been some really nice ones so far, but “MotorStorm” is the first to truly impress me.

“MotorStorm” is an off-road racing game that takes place in Utah’s Monument Valley. Vehicles of all types — cars, trucks, buggies, motorcycles, even semis — tear through mud-filled caverns.

The Utah desert is absolutely gorgeous and as photorealistic as I’ve seen in a video game. The cars themselves look great. They show damage as you crash your way through the courses, and mud covers the cars and even splatters onto the camera.

There are multiple ways around each course, some up high on ledges, others at the bottom of canyons. Figuring out where to go is crucial to winning; in smaller vehicles such as motorcycles, you have to stay up high or be plowed over by the bigger vehicles.

The goal is to win races, but it’s also without rules. The artificial intelligence can be brutal, using the vehicles as weapons to knock you around or even off the course.

It’s fun, but for how long? There’s no offline multiplayer racing, only single-player and online, which is a huge disappointment. The single-player game also lacks depth, as there are only eight tracks and not a lot to do on them once you’ve figured out which paths to take with which vehicle. There aren’t any other racing modes, and once you’ve unlocked all the tracks ... Well, by then, you’re likely kind of bored.

Probably the only way to extend the life of “MotorStorm” is with the online play, which allows for up to 12 racers. Once you’ve beaten (or are tired of) the single-player experience, you can go online and play with real people. And racing against real people is always more fun.

I just wish there were more to the offline game. Not everybody likes to play online, and if I’m going to fork out $60 for a game, I want it to have a more robust single-player experience.

Frustrating ‘Blur’

I honestly can’t decide if the Wii’s motion-sensitive controls are going to stick around. There are times, such as while playing “SSX Blur” this week, that I wish I could just go back to a regular old controller.

I was really excited for “SSX Blur.” I’ve loved the snowboarding series for years, and I wanted to see how it would play with the motion controls.

Sadly, the answer for much of the game is: Frustratingly.

The impression I get while fighting my way through the complicated controls for “Blur” is that the developers tried to be as different as possible with the control scheme, regardless of if it actually worked. It seems there was a simpler route they could have taken but chose not to.

It’s not entirely broken. You can slog your way through the game, but there’s so much to remember at once that it saps away a lot of the fun. It’s kind of feels like the old pat your head and rub your belly trick.

Here’s a quick rundown of the controls, which use both the Wii remote and the nunchuk controller.

To move forward, push up on the nunchuk thumbstick. To turn, push the thumbstick that direction. To turn more sharply, turn your nunchuk wrist that direction (though it seems you can never quite turn as sharply as you need). To jump, either flick up with the nunchuk or hit the A button on the remote. To do a grab in the air, hold in the Z button on the nunchuk. To spin in the air, flick the remote up, down or to the sides, but make sure you do it before you do a grab or it won’t work.

There are so many different things going on at once, it’s hard to do exactly what you want, especially if you’re a perpetual hand-dropper or remote raiser, which can mess up what you’re trying to do.

But even that would be bearable if the ubertricks weren’t in need of serious help. One of the best things about the “SSX” series has always been the ability to perform amazing supertricks. In this case, the ubertricks are almost impossible to pull off.

Once you fill your “groove” meter and jump in the air, an ubertrick indicator pops up with a shape you have to draw in the air. Sounds cool, but the game requires the motion to be so exact that it’s difficult to do correctly even in practice mode, when you’re not hurtling wildly through the air.

After spending some time with the game, the controls become more bearable, almost fun. But I could never shake the feeling that mostly what I was doing was waving the controls around and hoping for random tricks, instead of planning a trick strategy.

That’s what keeps “Blur” from being another stellar entrant in the series, even though I don’t have an issue with anything else in the game (the graphics are pretty and there are, as always, tons of unlockables). If you’re an “SSX” fan, check out “Blur,” but be warned that you might not like what you get.

If motion controls are going to make it in certain types of game, they need to both allow for more precision and be a little less complicated. The problem is I don’t know if one can be achieved without the other. And therein lies the dilemma.