Wipeout Fusion

"Who knew racing at the speed of sound could seem so slow?"

I heard good things about the Wipeout series all through the PS1's life cycle, but I never got around to playing them, what with all the RPGs I was buried under. So when I heard good things about Wipeout Fusion, I figured I'd give this series a chance. I really should've started with the PS1 titles...

Graphics

Some damn nice PS2-quality graphics, which is to say it won't blow you away unless all you own is a PS2. The tracks are very detailed, and considering this game runs at an almost painful 30 frames per second, you'll be able to take in quite a lot of it. The biggest and probably most important problem with this game is the framerate. It's slow. It's somewhat consistent, with only the odd dip here and there, but the fact that it's only 30FPS makes for some slow high-speed racing. An oxymoron, you say? I only wish it weren't so.

Sound

You know how futuristic racers have a lot of punk rock and techno? This one's no exception, with a lot of licensed music from artists I've never heard of, personally. You can choose what you listen to during the race, which is quite a nice feature if you have a favorite song. I'd say some words on the sound effects, but they're so muted, it's hard to tell what's what. The same with the voices most of the time, which tell you what weapon you've picked up, etc.

Gameplay

There's a ton of modes in this game, though not are all available from the start. You unlock different game modes through playing the game. That is, one particular game mode is unlocked when you've finished X% of the game. Finishing races, the AG circuit, and Arcade matches add to this percent. It's a nice little indicator of how much of the game is left to complete.

Anyway, the game. The X button is your accelerator, and there is no brake. The L2 and R2 buttons serve as your airbrakes, while the R1 button fires your current weapon, and the L1 and triangle buttons alter the viewpoint. The controls are responsive, which is expected of a racer, so there's no real problem there.

The AG League is where you'll be playing the majority of the game at first. You're able to pick a team (among those that are available at first) and a racer (only one racer per team is available when you start). More teams and racers can be unlocked along the AG League in 'deathmatches' that consist of a 1v1 race to the finish line. The more races you win and the higher you place, the more prize money you take home. You can use this money to spend on upgrades for your vehicle. Certain vehicles have a limited amount of upgrades that you can buy, while later ones that you unlock can be improved further than earlier models. However, there's a downside to this. The more you upgrade your vehicle, the more the opposition's vehicles improve. Fortunately, you can remove upgrades for a full refund, so you basically control how good the opposition is.

As for the courses, they seem to have an endless supply, but in reality a lot either mirror images of themselves or slightly altered versions. You end up with a whole lot of tracks that may or may not give you deja vu. On the tracks I now speak of are little colored pads that give you weapons capable of causing much mayhem. The normal weapons range from missiles to portable earthquakes, and each team has a super weapon that can be unlocked through more racing.

Wipeout Fusion offers a lot of game modes, more than I can list here, in fact. My personal favorite has to be Zone Mode, which is basically lapping one course over and over, going faster and faster, until your shields fail and you die. The fact that you can go faster in this mode than in the rest of the game might be coloring my judgment ever so slightly.

As a final word, this game is very prone to freezing up. While it didn't happen to me too often, it can and will lock up on occasion, so it's best to save often.

Replay Value

It takes quite a while to get to 100%, and there's also a track editor to boot. However, I stopped playing well short of 100%, and I had seen all there was to see. Every track, every mode, every team and racer. Maybe I'm just being overly strict, but I tend to expect racing games that boast such high speeds to give you the sense that you're flying at 1000KPH. I never got that sense when playing Wipeout Fusion. While it's fun at first, and building up your racer how you like is interesting, by the time you finish up the AG League, you'll have seen all this game has to offer.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/29/03