Wipeout XL

"Must own game right here, folks"

The PlayStation owes some of its early success to the original WipeOut. Not only did it manage to impress early adopters visually; it also reeked of excellent futuristic racing thanks to the challenging courses. WipeOut XL plays pretty much like the first one... on steroids.

So what should you expect? Nothing much. Just one of the best racing games the PS1 has to offer with a superb sense of speed, tracks to test the skills of the novice and the veteran and one of the best techo soundtracks in any video game. That's all. Really, WOXL manages to get so many things right its almost scary.

When you first turn on WOXL, you'll find the following modes to choose from: arcade, time trial, one-on-one and arcade link. Most of your time will be spent in the arcade mode competing in different championship races against the devious CPU. You can advance and win medals by placing first second or third. You won't get anywhere for placing below that so do your best not to lag behind the pack. You can race the courses in any order you desire but to ease your way into the game and better adjust yourself to the difficulty, you'd best race them in the order the game presents them to you. No one should have any problems with the first two tracks but after that, the game plays hard ball. WOXL's tracks are monsters throwing sharp curves at you, unexpected blind turns, huge jumps and other various hazards to bang up your futuristic ride. Speaking of which, if you take too much damage your hovercraft will explode and you'll lose the race. Fortunately each track has a pit lane you can run over to repair your badly beaten craft a la F-Zero.

Controlling your hovercraft is pretty simple. Although each craft has its own set of strengths and weaknesses, so finding the one appropriate for you is a must. The crafts all have varying statistics in the form of thrust, top speed, turning ability aero dynamics and shield energy. Regardless of which craft you select, you’ll still end up flooring it like mad. However, if you’re thinking your crafts are going to stick to the road like F-Zero, forget it. These babies actually do hover meaning controlling them takes a little more effort but not too much.

Speed isn’t your only means to getting ahead in WOXL. When you drive over weapon panels, you can activate power-ups that are determined at random. You could end up with a speed boost, missiles, mines, autopilot, shields and a ton of other cool dirty tricks. Be aware that the CPU racers also have access to every weapon you do and they won’t hesitate to use them. Lucky for you the announcer warns you of any oncoming danger.

WOXL was released in 1996 so it is one of the PS1’s earlier games. Nonetheless, this puppy has aged just as well as the amazing gameplay has. The racing environments are well detailed and offer so much color you’d be surprised a game like this was even possible on the PS1 back in ’96.
You’ll races across snowy valleys, exotic jungles, and stellar cityscapes. Best of all even with 12 to 15 ships on the track this game never loses a drop of its frame rate. Oh there’s some pop up in the game but on the whole, you have to admire how pretty this game still looks.

Not too many racing games can to put together excellent racing and a topnotch soundtrack to go with it. In some titles, the music is just there to be there (Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit.) However, with WOXL this is certainly not the case. When you play WOXL turn up the volume, loud. Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Future Sound of London, all come together to create a fabulous techno score. You can easily forget about racing and just listen to the excellent music WOXL offers. Yes, the tunes are that good. Best of all you can change songs on the fly. Just pause the game during a race, go to the audio options and change tracks. You can also do this in the main menu.

It all comes down to this: if you’re a gamer at all, you need WipeOut XL. Even if you’ve experienced more visually polished games like Gran Turismo 3 and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, you must play this game. It doesn't matter where you find your copy. Just buy it now.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/02, Updated 11/02/02