Certainly approaching BigBig’s PSP offering purely from a visual standpoint, we’d challenge anyone to not be excited by Arctic Edge. Its graphics don’t just sizzle, they effervesce, and with each twist and turn, explode tiny droplets of loveliness directly in your widening eyes. Until, that is, your vehicle begins to pick up speed.

You see, the first problem we had with the game would seem an ungrateful complaint. It’s clear that BigBig has gone to enormous lengths to bring to the PSP nearly every feature we’ve come to expect from a MotorStorm title on hardware that’s immeasurably more powerful. Snow and mud spatter credibly onto the surface of your console’s screen, much of the abundant trackside furnishings are physics-based objects and vehicles themselves are expertly modelled and carve their own blemishes into the beautifully designed tracks (of which there are 12, each with a dizzying number of routes through which to pick your way through to the finish line). We’re ungrateful, then, because at times there’s just too much going on, leading to an unsettling number of headlong crashes into unseen obstacles.

Having said that, the problem lessened over time as our brains began to recognise patterns in signage and landscape from a greater distance, and indeed as the tracks themselves began to become familiar.

The game’s career mode, known here as ‘Festival’, delivers an intimidatingly populated spiral of potential races, separated into eight difficulty tiers. To reach tier two, you’ll have to complete all of tier one. However, if like us, you’re a stickler for not moving one race to the next without attaining first place and garnering maximum points, you’ll soon be unlocking tier four before you’ve properly finished tier two and so on. Rewards for winning each come in the form of XP and the unlocking of new rides, liveries, specific races and so on.

Like its bigger brothers, Arctic Edge affords players the opportunity to drive various off-road vehicle types including bikes, ATVs, cars, trucks, buggies; and now, thanks to the game’s Alaska-inspired snow-kissed courses, obscenely huge but surprisingly speedy snowplows and skittish-but-exciting snowmobiles.

There are obvious limitations in bringing a game template that was designed with raw processing power in mind to Sony’s diminutive handheld. For one, the physics model isn’t exactly the most complex, which in real terms results in unpredictable outcomes should your ride meet something other than open road.