My God, it's full of stars!
It must be racing week at Atomic HQ. Josh has been drooling over Ferraris and Porsches in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, and now it’s my turn behind the wheel. Or, more accurately, control system.
I don’t think the hover racers in Wipeout actually have wheels.
Wipeout HD is the PS3 game that many of us have been waiting for. It’s long been said that the platform lacks real ‘killer app’ titles, like Halo or Wii Sports. Well, if the amount of people who have looked at Wipeout HD over the last day or two are anything to go by, sales of PS3s – and HD televisions – are about to go through the roof.
On the whole, if you’ve played one Wipeout game, Wipeout HD has nothing really new to offer, at least on the surface. You pick your team, race your races, and bop along the techno-bloody-techno-darling; but if you think that’s all there is to the game, my God, you’re so wrong. There are simply no words to describe what it’s like in a full HD environment – our testing studio isn’t even wired up with 5.1 sound yet, and it was still near-transcendental.
The preview we’ve played has four tracks, the first two flyers, all eight ships and all offline game-modes. There’s going to be a lot more in the final game, of course, but even as it stands I think I’d pay money for the preview. The Zone mode alone (video below) would be worth price of admission.
To progress through each ‘grid’ – not unlike the PSP version – you must amass points and medals. You also only start with so many races and race modes unlocked on the grid, and must score medals to unlock more. However, we’ve pretty much settled on Zone as the single best thing ever of high-speed racing.
It’s like a combination of Tetris and an intense acid trip. You must clear zones on the track to win, and you’ve got as long as your shields last to do it. Sounds simple, but rather than the ultra glossy and realistic tracks you’ve played on up until now, the zone tracks are colour-washed visions that look like something out of William Gibson’s fevered imagination of Cyberspace. Add in a track that is literally built out of graphic equalizers pumping in time with whatever music you’re listening to (we heart custom playlists and the grand-daddy of all Wipeout tracks, FireStarter), and colour refreshes every time you pass a certain point in the race, and you end up with a game that will have a room of people literally ooh-ing and aah-ing along with the player as they zen out completely.
Aside from that, the improved graphics add a level of gritty realism the game hasn’t really had until now. Rockets leave smoke trails across the track, ships explode in bits of flaming metal, the controls are twitchier than ever. The pre-race fly-bys show off the fully-detailed cockpits to best advantage, and every surface is bump-mapped to within an inch of its glorious life. And, as always, Wipeout HD offers an unrivalled sense of speed and mayhem, with every race being a unique event thanks to the random weapon selections and opposing driver AI.
And this is all before we even get to online competitive play. The release date for the game has slipped once or twice before, but it’s so far looking solid for a mid-year release. Bring. It. On.
Issue: 107 | December, 2009