Friday 23 May 2008

The future, something that has endless possibilities and which we have no idea of, but if the Wipeout series is a glimpse of what is to come then we have something special coming our way…even if it is 2170, which means that in three generations our children’s children’s children will most probably have the chance to witness this in its true form. Hell, that’s if it actually becomes anything more than a video game. One can but dream!…Or you can go to your nearest store and virtually experience this right now!

Wipeout has been thrilling us with their franchise since 1995 on the PS1 and it was in fact the sequel “Wipeout 2097” (or Wipeout XL in NTSC territories) which grabbed the imagination of all racing fans worldwide. F-Zero on the Super Nintendo might have invented the idea of futuristic racing, but Wipeout added something essential – WEAPONS!

Weapons galore

Over the years we’ve seen several different weapons in the game from rockets to missiles and earth quakes. Now I introduce you to the new weapons: Shuriken – this weapon bounces off everything destroying everything in sight until the timer runs out; and secondly we have the Repulsor – a disturbance weapon which affects a large area around your ship, causing damage to any rivals and at times knocking them off course.

One thing that has not changed since day one is the difficulty of this game. I ended up setting it to easy to stand a chance (in the first race) to actually receive a gold medal. It’s insanely tough requiring Zen-like patience to learn every track’s hairpin bends, loops and chicanes. Once mastered I guess you can move up to “normal” difficulty, but then you need to understand that things are only gonna get tougher after the Venom and Flash race speed divisions. Oh yes, we have Rapier and Phantom to take care of adrenalin junkies.

The presentation of this game is excellent with “Race Campaign” being the option I see most players delving into. This provides you with a new take on this franchise where you are represented with a grid of races. Each hexagon consists of several events which can be races according to your preferance, but you need to acquire a certain number of points to progress to the next grid. Progress takes forever, but they gradually up the learning curve making sense of the earlier difficulty.

Wipeout online

With regards to multiplayer we, yet again like Wipeout Pure on the PSP, got the opportunity to race seven other participants via network or gamesharing. The new addition is something we’ve all be crying out for – Wipeout online. I had absolutely no problem joining (seeing that you have a PSN account). The races could at times be a bit laggy which is irritating at high speeds with corners approaching. If you do find players with decent connection speeds this game is great online and eventually you have eight players racing as running an eight player networked Wipeout Pulse tournament is unheard of and most likely impossible. Another nice feature, which involves being online, is that you can download new skins for your ships. I found an impressive “Captain Falcon” ship design and one or two other designs which I downloaded straight to the memory card. A very nice extra feature…even better, you can design your own skins on that same website!

But old problems persist. The too-strict collision detection means your craft can hug a rail for a few furlongs, destroying any chance of recovery, worse still it feels rather charmless.

Knuckle-whitening racing thrills

As a weapon based racer Wipeout: Pulse shares a lot in common with Mario Kart – but its lack of character means it’s not half as much fun to play. With a few more twists and tweaks this might have been superb; as it is only fans of the series will love this. It’s not for everyone, but if you love knuckle-whitening racing thrills, look no further.

Pros: Some of the best visuals produced on PSP; great sense of speed.

Cons: Downloadable content…but at a price (Wipeout Pure’s was free); collision detection problems.

Rating:
Contributor:	Dawid

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