The pilot assist feature works well and it’s pretty unintrusive. It’s like a passive autopilot that gently nudges you away from the track walls. It won’t save you every time, but for people new to WipEout it makes the game much more accessible, which is a good thing. Also the other great thing about WipEout HD is that I don’t have to use the SIXAXIS controls at all. I still fly using the good old d-pad.

So what’s not so good. Well, I know lots of people really love the new look to the zone tracks, but I’m that impressed. To be honest I was never that big a fan of zone tracks. I much prefer the challenge of perfecting a time trial or the all out mayhem of the races. With the zone tracks it’s all at little, well, boring. In particular the new zone “look” actually makes it harder to play (maybe that’s the point?). When your zipping around at rapier speed the whole environment is eye blindingly red, which makes it an absolute arse to see where your going. Not fun.

The other aspect of WipEout HD that is a little bit of a let down is the tracks available. There is only 8 and 6 are from Wipeout Pure and 2 from Wipeout Pulse. Being a big WipEout fan I have played these tracks to death, so I would have welcomed some new ones. However, new tracks are supposedly planned for future DLC, at a cost obviously.

In Summary:

It looks amazing (especially on a HDTV), plays brilliantly and you can finally blow people up online. Buy it.

Screenshots:

WipEout HD is available now for £13.99 on the Playstation 3 from the PSN store

Age rating:

3+ (PEGI)

What is it?

Futuristic racing game, with lots of lovely weapons.

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money? £22.99

Yep, every penny.

Why?

Like anything in life, practice makes perfect. So given that Wipeout Pulse is the 8th incarnation of the futuristic racing series does the same analogy hold true? I’m pleased to say it does. Everything that was good about Wipeout Pure has been built upon in Pulse with the following additions:

• More tracks – 12 new ones
• More teams – 12 teams in total
• New Mag-strip track surface – Tracks can now have loops and super sharp turns.
• New weapons – Repulsor, shurikens and cannon
• Team loyalty system
• Adjustable AI difficulty
• Custom soundtracks
• Custom ship skin creator – via wipeout-game.com
• New tournament structure
• Photo mode – Take your own pretty pictures, as I did for this review
• On-line racing

Yep, on-line racing is there for the first time. Now I get my butt kicked on-line as well as off line and I can see just how slow my times are via the wipeout-game.com site Yay, I think. It is a welcome, if slightly overdue addition to the series.

The adjustable AI (easy, normal and hard) opens up a lot more of the game to most people. In the previous games, increasing the difficulty by increasing the speed resulted in few people actually completing all the tournaments. Now, at least, the Wipeout tourist setting (aka easy) allows you to experience the whole game. However, it doesn’t prepare you for the harsh reality of on-line racing though. For that set the difficulty to hard. Well, technically you need an evil setting (aka human) to be fully prepared.

It’s not all sugar and spice and all things nice in Pulse. To my mind the balance of time trials to races during tournaments is a bit off. There are simply too many time trials and not enough races. I like races, time trials are just boring. Also enough with the Zone races. I know this was quite a cool addition to Pure but Studio Liverpool had gone a bit OTT with the number of Zone races you have to complete. Tons of them, again with the boring.

It seems Sony have decided to start squeezing every last drop of coin out of Wipeout. How? Well, the previously free downloadable content for Pure now costs money in Pulse. These expansion packs vary in price from £1.99 to £3.49 (4 have been announced – Mirage and Icaras are available now). It’s another case of micro transaction infestation.

Finally, it’s a Wipeout game without any CoLD SToRAGE music. Bad, bad, bad. At least I can now create a customised soundtrack (something also available in Wipeout HD) with lots of my own CoLD SToRAGE tracks, so it’s not all lost in a savage pit of mire.

In summary: The best Wipeout game so far on any system.

Screenshots:

Wipeout Pulse is available now on PSP

Age rating: 3+ (PEGI)

What is it?

Arcade style rally racing.

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money? £39.99

Yes.

Why?

I almost need to review Sega Rally twice. Once with the standard 360 controller and once with the set-up that Sega provided us when we visited them in August. Why? Well, playing Sega Rally whilst sitting in a Sparco racing seat, with force-feedback steering wheel (and pedals) I was in driving heaven. It’s perfect. You can feel every bump as your car drives over all the track deformations and as it power slides around another lovely corner.

Unsurprisingly, without the steering wheel you do feel a little bit more disconnected from your car. The 360 controller is never going to recreate force-feed back, so its really a minor gripe in the scheme of things. But now I’ve tasted Sega Rally force-feedback style I want more. Lots more. Now if only I could persuade Sega to lend me all the kit….

Anyway Sega Rally is really fun to play. All the cars handle well and look beautiful. Mmm, car pr0n. There are plenty of tracks spread over a variety of different environments to test all your driving skills. There are 5 other AI cars in each race to fight with, and Gran Turismo style driving (i.e. dive down the inside at each corner) proves surprisingly effective. So they aren’t too hard to beat, but will put up challenge if you don’t drive well. In particular there are a couple of Alpine tracks that look absolutely stunning whilst your driving, something I never really experienced with DIRT (Sega Rally’s closest competitor).

Whilst on the subject of DIRT they are quite different games. Yes, they are both “rally” games, but Sega Rally is all about the arcade experience with its quick pick-up and play ideology. Where as DIRT is a more nuts and blots rally game, with damage, accurate stages and 1 car vs the track gameplay.

As far as multiplayer is concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed racing against other people via Xbox Live. The arcade style game play works really well for those quick 3 lap races with up 5 other people at once. It’s also very easy to find available races, something that I found much harder to do in DIRT. As all the cars are nicely balanced in terms of power and handling it really is a test of driver skill and not machinery.

In summary:

It’s a fun, pick up and play arcade racer. What more could you want?

Screenshots:

Sega Rally is out now on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PSP.

The Sega customer relations people gave us lots of info – some of it propaganda and some of it plain truth. We’ve filtered out most of the propaganda for you. Here’s what you need to know:

1. It feels like the original arcade game:
   The designers have preserved its fast, close-racing experience – all through the race you’re convinced that if you cut the next corner a liiiiittle bit closer you’ll be in the lead. They’ve also kept the HUD style close to the original arcade design, with the addition of a map. In terms of graphics, the artists seem to have signed up to the Blue Skies Campaign. Yay for happy games! This has not gone unnoticed by the organisers at UK Resistance.
2. It’s a casual rally:
   Colin McRae’s DiRT prides itself on being an accurate recreation of rally driving, right down to letting you adjust your car’s limited slip diffs. Sega Rally… doesn’t. They’ve kept the arcade version’s track notes that warn you of approaching hazards but there is nothing on the level of real-life pacenotes. This is a pure high-adrenaline racing game designed to let you thrash your friends in a quick 5-minute challenge after a night out. Or be thrashed, but that would never happen to you, right?
3. The ‘surface deformation’ is a pretty good feature:
   Sega were very proud of the fact that when you skid through the muddy parts of the track, your wheels will churn up the track surface. These tyre troughs will persist through the whole race, potentially destroying the traditional racing line. You can really feel the difference in the track on laps two and three, through the magic of force feedback. (Or not, if you’re stuck with a sixaxis controller). This brings the game much closer to the spirit of rally racing, forcing you to negotiate unexpected lumps and bumps. MotorStorm tried to do the same thing but, as we have noticed ourselves, track marks would disappear and reappear for no obvious reason. Gouges stay where they’re supposed to in this version of Sega Rally.
4. The race cameras are all useful:
   There are four in-race camera views: Two rear views, one bumper cam and one on the bonnet. Certain touring-car games which shall remained unnamed seem to think that filling half the screen with a dashboard is a good idea. No, it’s a big waste of time when your opponent has a full-screen view. Say “No!” to pointless camera angles.
5. All the locations play differently:
   We raced in three different locations (Tropical, Canyon and Alpine) with (probably) Safari and two others making up the six that will be available. Each location has its own particular feel to the track surface and there are several tracks in each location. Those in the alpine region were snowy and had noticably less grip, the dry canyon track was good for newbies, the tropical one is wet and muddy – all is pretty much as you would expect.

6. None of the cars will be stupidly overpowered:
   I hear that when you play Virtua Tennis 3 online, everyone is using Duke or King because those two unlockable characters are so much more powerful than the rest. We were assured that this will not happen in Sega Rally as the cars are carefully balanced. This doesn’t mean that all the cars will be the same, although to be honest, we didn’t really notice any major handling differences between the cars during our short session.
7. There is no car damage:
   This was a highly-unfashionable decision, judging by most recent racing games, but I think it was reasonable. Contending with the churned-up track is probably enough challenge without having to drive with broken front suspension as well. For any mud-lovers reading, if you drive through lots of muddy areas, your car will get progressively muddier and, get this… feature at least three different shades of caked mud!! Um… yeah. Okay. You can sort of wash it off in the puddles, too. They made it happen right there before our eyes.
8. Sixaxis tilt control will (probably) be used:
   We didn’t play with it but were told that it is in there, for now. No confirmation on whether it be in the final version. If it’s anything like in MotorStorm, I wouldn’t miss it – far too unnatural-feeling to be any good. On the other hand, some people like to drive like that so we’re mentioning it anyway.
9. You can turn off the track info:
   As we said in point 2, there are simplified, arcade-friendly pacenotes in the form of a verbal warning with associated orange HUD icons. Some people may find these distracting. If you don’t like things flashing onto your screen then have no fear. They are easily removable through the options.
10. The AI is adaptive:
    No matter how good or how bad your driving is, Sega Rally will modify the AI to give you a decent challenge. Allegedly. It still needs tweaking as, according to the marketing team, none of the bloggers last week finished higher than third place. Only two came close and one of those was TheFluffyFist, rally-driver extraordinaire. He won a jacket and everything. He’s wearing the jacket prototype in the photo below and has done a remarkably good job of hiding all the giant SEGA logos. We didn’t get to take the giant trophy home. They told us that they’d have his name engraved on it at some point, not that he’ll ever get to see it or show anyone. Uhh.. back to the point, the marketing team assured us that the AI is still in development and will be much better in the finished version.

As much fun as the game was, there are some additional things we should mention. Firstly, it’s named Sega Rally on this side of the Atlantic and Sega Rally Revo in the US.

Next, the track surface deformation is a good feature but is crippled by the current maximum race length of only four laps. In such a short race, you don’t really get to appreciate how the changes to the track’s surface will affect your lap times. This lap limit may change between now and the game’s impending release. We certainly hope it does.

Downloadable content will be available but has not yet been finalised. The current thinking from the development team is that if things are built, they should be in the game, not held back for later release or sale. No horse-armour from Solihull’s Sega Racing Studio.

There will be offline and online multiplayer support. Unfortunately, we forgot to ask if “offline multiplayer” means “split-screen multiplayer” or “bring your console and TV to a mate’s house multiplayer”. I really hope it’s the former. You can have up five online opponents or two-to-four split-screen offline multiplayer competitions.

Finally, we did play the game in Sega’s London offices. They provided dedicated racing pods complete with a huge flat-panel screens, Sparco racing seats, foot pedals, gearsticks and force-feedback Logitech steering wheels. All games seem better when you’re two feet from a 28-inch screen. We’re probably completely biased, but we don’t care. It was a really fun game. With any luck, it’s just as fun with a normal console controller.

Sega Rally will be released in the UK on 28th September on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PSP. Oh, and mobile but I’ll be extremely surprised if that bears any resemblance to the version we played. Thanks go to the Sega Rally team for inviting us.

Related Links

Other bloggers who visited Sega:

• Simon from Zath – He was at our session!
• Ben from Binary Joy
• NekoFever.com
• Mark at British Gaming Blog
• James Woodcock’s blog

SEGA

• SEGA Rally’s YouTube site
• Sega Rally Official Website
• Sega Rally Blog

Edit: It definitely does support offline split-screen multiplayer.

Age rating: 12+ (PEGI)

What is it?

It’s a rally game. Think Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo but with lots of mud (and car damage).

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money? £39.99 from play.com

Yep.

Why?

Car damage and speed, the 2 essential elements in any decent rally game. Fortunately Colin McRae’s DIRT has tons and tons of speed and shed loads of car damage. When I was belting down the 3rd stage of the Rally of Wales in my Lancia Delta S4 at some hideous speed, it really felt like seat of the pants stuff. Then I screwed my entry to one of the corners and whoops-a-daisy, the car performs a perfect barrel role in mid air. Back on all 4 wheels, minus 1 door – which I wasn’t using anyway – I managed to finish the stage.

I love the way this game looks. All the tracks ooze fantastic levels of detail. Mud, snow and dust laden environments are all nicely rendered. Each area littered with so many pesky road side obstacles with which to destroy your car. You also get this real feeling of being on the just on the edge as you are hurtling down each stage, with the scenery crowding round your car. The Australian stages feel especially claustrophobic with lots of trees and bush lying in wait for you to meander slightly off line. Your car’s really buggered when you do, I can tell you. I’ve lots of experience buggering up my car, me.

However, there are some rubbish bits. Firstly, the menu music is crap. I turned off it off pretty darn quickly as the same track was repeated again and again. Eventually it just got to me as it will you. Secondly, what’s with the stupid American commentator and co-driver (no Nicky Grist, rubbish)? For the first few races you don’t mind and just try to ignore him (your co-drive unfortunately you have to listen to). But then you begin to realise that he has about 5 recorded banal statements to chirp at you after finishing a race. Annoying. And the truck/Big rig races. Why? They are slow and boring. Total waste of time and effort and they just don’t feel like they should part of this game.

One question I’d like answered is what happened to Colin McRae then? Why are his dulcet Scottish tones missing from this game? It’s named after him, but he’s nowhere to be seen unlike the previous 4 releases. Did Codemasters just shove a wodge of cash Colin’s way for the use of his name in his absence? The only reference to Colin I could find was in the endgame credits under the “special thanks to” section.

In summary:

The best rally game on any of the next-gen consoles, for the moment anyway.

Screenshots:

Update 16th Sep 07: Tragically Colin McRae was killed last night in a helicopter crash near his home in Scotland. His son and 2 family friends were also killed in the crash. Our thoughts are with the families affected by this great loss.

What is it?

Off-road driving game. Think WRC but with more vehicles.

Is it fun?

Yes, but frequently irritating as hell.

Is it worth the money? £39.99

Yes.

Why?

I have some mixed feeling about this game. At times it makes me feel like “I am a driving God”. Seconds later it turns round and exacts its revenge for my skillful driving by shattering my race position, all because the lady loves milk tray. Sorry, I meant to say, all because I just hit a tiny rock or grazed another competitor’s vehicle resulting in my vehicle hurtling to its doom. Or I get repeatedly splatted by large trucks which all drive like they are auditioning for Duel. Bye, bye race win. Hello last place.

Take last night for example. After 2 perfect laps (if I do say so myself), I’m approaching the final corner of the race in 1st place and then *BAMM* taken out from behind by one of the most evilly-AI-scripted suicidal opponents ever. Cue the pretty (annoying) slow-mo crash sequence and by the time I’m back in the race I’m in 10th place. Race over. Great. I don’t mind losing, but when it happens like this, courtesy of some quiet blatant cheating by the game then I’m not a happy bunny.

If you can deal with the evil AI, which to be honest, is equally bad in all the Mario Kart games anyway, then a pretty accomplished and downright fun game emerges. The Motorstorm experience is very close-quarter racing, resulting total carnage when the big-rigs catch you. Each of the 8 tracks are enormous, with multiple routes. Even better, each route has a major effect on your vehicle – muddy valleys work well with mud pluggers and high-speed roads favour the cars. All this is brought to life by some truly beautiful graphics.

In summary: Motorstorm looks amazing but has a tendency to slow down during big, multi-vehicle crashes [So, hardly at all... haha! - Weefz] It also has mostly crap in-game music and evil, evil opponent AI. But it’s still outrageous fun. Will annoy and amaze in equal doses.

Screenshots:

Buy it today! (Affiliate link)

Buy from Play.com

What is it?

It’s a car racing game where you get speed boost in exchange for driving into oncoming traffic.

Is it fun?

Yes but not as much as Burnout 3, you spend more time skipping though the reward movies/menus sometimes than actually driving. At least that’s how it feels at times.

Is it worth the money? £34.99

No, unless the online mode has something fantastic going for it, save yourself a wad of cash and get Burnout 3 instead.

Why?

Burnout 3 was the first in the series that I played, and it was really good fun. It wasn’t without fault, but I was looking forward to the next instalment. I quickly found myself disappointed.

GOOD – The ingame art is much more gritty and detailed looking, which makes learning tracks take longer, but that’s not so bad once you played the game a while.

BAD – The music is as awful as ever, no worse than B3, but sadly no better either – why they couldn’t put a mix of styles on is beyond me, some pop, some rock etc.

BUMMEDOUT – The main menus look pretty good, but become ridiculous when you start playing the game and discover its `reward` system. Drive in a race, get a medal (not hard) and, oh, you’ve unlocked a new car and track! Oh and then you have won some points then get entered into some big thermometer of how crazy a driver you are. And then there are a million and one reward movies that get played for things like `crashing someone into a boat`, `dropping onto an opponent from above` and `turning a corner whilst picking your nose`! Ok well I made up the last one, but it may as well be true, there are just so many ways to get a slap on the back and two thumbs up from the game that you just give up caring. More game time and less reward menus to chew though next time please!

GIMMICKY – The new traffic checking seems like a good idea at first, but I think it actually weakens the game. Traffic checking means you can ram small and medium sized vehicles (if travelling in the same direction as you) from behind, if they then hit other vehicles (like bowling pins) you can earn boost. They can also be used to hit and takeout race opponents. It’s good fun but removes some of the skill of negotiating the traffic, and also means to earn boost you can avoid driving into traffic moving in the opposite direction to yourself, so you do it less often. I much preferred Burnout 3, when you had to dip into the oncoming traffic to catch up with other racers else you’d have no chance of catching up. It made the risk-reward process much more pleasurable.

SPACIOUS – The new tracks are generally good, sometimes feeling a bit cluttered but much more open. In fact the games’ one true saving grace is the alternate track routes, the night time city road course being the best example:

Powersliding round a corner with 3 opponents on your tail, you realise that
you are going too fast, slide off the track and… POW – it’s
ok! You haven’t fallen off the course and crashed, but have instead plopped
onto the road beneath! Yay, you can keep on moving with no pauses.

Moments like this are great fun and remind me of one of the later tracks on Destruction Derby 2 (Playstation1) where the tracks would criss-cross over. I wish they had made more multilayer courses in Wipeout Pure (PSP).

BOO HOO – The crash mode is similar to before, but the pickups have been removed (both a good and a bad thing) and there is now a childishly annoying golf swing style starter meter to get you car moving. Oh and the game laughs at you if you muck it up, erm great – more time wasting!

GRRR – One final dumb thing is that if you race, and end with no medals you are given the option to race again, cool. If you end with say, bronze, you aren’t allowed to retry immediately, you have to go through all those `reward` menus AGAIN! Why EA, oh why?

(not actual game cover)

What is it?

Driving, kill-em up through the medium of cars, bikes, trucks, guns, emergency vehicles and even a helicopter!

Is it fun?

Yes, apart from the frequent annoying bits.

Is it worth the money? £29.99

Yes, if you like GTA games, otherwise try before you buy, and yes it’s most definitely an 18 rated game.

Why?

It’s all about stealing cars, shooting/stabbing/beating up anyone, doing anything you want in a totally free roaming environment and the bad guys are the cops!

The graphics are pretty good, not stunning but GTA games never looked great as far as looks are concerned. If truth be told the graphics do look a little bit gay. Check out the screenshots below to see what I mean.

The game play is a mixture of missions and general wandering around just doing stuff (mostly bad). The missions vary from easy, walk in the park (and then shooting someone), to being urber hard, requiring the reflexes of a chipmunk on speed due to the excessive police response (helicopters, SWAT teams). In addition, the police are truly psychotic drivers in GTA and come out of nowhere to smash your car into a little, itty-bitty corner of the map, and then your car blows up after some serious pummelling by the cops and then you’re dead. Mission over….Aggghhh….Restart.

This is the most annoying aspect of this game as you frequently become stuck on many of the harder missions, made all the harder by the slightly shoddy (or evil) driver AI giving you the feeling that sometime the PSP really doesn’t want you to complete a mission.

Overall Rockstar Leeds have done a great done in bringing GTA to the PSP with the slow loading times the only noticeable difference from the PS2 versions.

So basically if you like GTA games you’ll love this. Me, it’s a kind of love-hate mix.

Firmware version: 2.00 or greater (i.e. all UK PSPs, as these shipped with firmware 2.0)

Links:

GTA – Liberty City Stories

Screenshots:

What is it?

Futuristic racing game with weapons

Is it fun?

Yes, it`s totally fantastic…but sometimes incredibly frustrating (usually directed at your own inadequate reactions)

Is it worth the money? £27.99

Yes, yes, yes!
That’s even before you take into consideration the free downloadable extra content! Yay :-)

Why?

WipEout Pure takes the best bits from the previous WipEout games, jazzes up the graphics, adds more weapons, more music, more speed and leaves you with a fantastic racing game for your PSP.

So what is WipEout then? Pure and simply it’s a racing game. However, it’s set firmly in the future and your ship “hovers” above the ground as you collect various power-ups and speed-boosts by flying over pads situated in the floors of the tracks. These power-ups include everything from missiles to blow your opponent away to energy packs with which to replenish your ship’s energy, which decreases every time you get blasted by an opposing craft or hit the track walls.

As you progress through the game, which consists of your standard tournament based racing structure (i.e. come top of the point table after 4 races); you unlock the faster speed settings. When you finally unlock the Phantom class of tracks you begin to experience just how awesomely fast WipEout can be. This is a quick game, make no bones about it, your refexes will be tested to, and usually beyond their limits. In this respect WipEout is a very unforgiving game. You make a mistake, take a corner too wide and hit the wall, you will be punished (you lose some energy and get overtaken). However, practice makes perfect, so put in the game time and WipEout Pure will reward you with some fantastic racing action.

Add in the single races, time trials, wonderful dance music and the quite mad Zone tracks (complete as many zones – each lap is made up of 5 zones – as possible in a continually accelerating ship, before it explodes as you have hit the track walls too many times!) and you have quite a game.

If all this wasn’t enough already you can go to WipEout Pure website and download lots of free content giving you 14 new tracks, 8 new teams and more music. Fantastic. Thank you Studio Liverpool.

Firmware version: Any (1.00 and above)

Links:

WipEoutPure.com

Screenshots:

What is it?

A driving game

Is it fun?

Yes, apart from the music (which is terrible)

Is it worth the money? £29.99

Yes

Why?

Worth the cash just for the crash mode, in which you have to cause as much carnage as possible (in terms of monetary cost, dollars in this case) in exchange for medals. There are 100 different crash scenarios ranging from driving into on-coming motorway traffic to jumping into a convoy of tankers. Burn baby, burn. Fantastic, hours and hours of fun.

The rest of the game concerns itself with driving fast and driving dangerously and it achieves this with some verve. Driving on the wrong side of the road, performing outrageous power slides and smashing your opponents cars into the barriers are all rewarded with precious boost for your car allowing you to drive faster. Nice! The feeling of speed is really quite fantastic in this game.

The bad bits. The awful rock soundtrack (just turn it off as soon as possible!), iffy car/scenery collision detection, slow loading times and the way the AI cars can occasionally drive though some on-coming traffic totally unscathed.

This verson of Burnout (essentially the best bits of Burnout 1, 2 and 3) is much, much better than the bloated, over stylised Burnout Revenge (PS2 and XBOX) which seems to exhibit the impact of Burnout`s developer – Criterion – being bought by EA.

Firmware version: 1.52 or greater (i.e. all UK PSPs, as these shipped with firmware 2.0)

Links:

Burnout Legends – Official site (US)

Screenshots: