Ridge Racer

"Less than the sum of its parts, strangely"

Ridge Racer for the PSP is absolutely the most complete racing package ever assembled for a handheld, and is arguably one of the most complete racing packages in general. Not only does it combine practically every track from every previous Ridge Racer, it also includes an insanely enormous sound track and some of the best graphics ever produced, console or otherwise. With all of these positives, it's hard to imagine how Ridge Racer could go wrong, but part of the problem is that Ridge Racer hasn't changed a bit since its arcade days in the mid 1990's.

Ridge Racer has always been a very unrealistic racing game that emphasizes "drifts", which are sort of like purposefully hydroplaning your car around corners. This is all fine and good, but it's far too easy to do and way too forgiving for both newbies and veterans of the series. The PSP version of the game follows the formula to its grave, proving Namco's stubborn inability to inject some sort of realism into the series. Sure, Ridge Racer should have the crazy drifting and the like, but the game feels totally out-of-reality in many instances and frankly it's too easy. Anyway, on to the review.

Graphics

If you weren't holding a PSP in your hand, you'd swear you weren't playing a handheld game at all. Ridge Racer is a spectacle of graphical design and literally blows all other PSP games out of the water. Cars reflect whatever they're driving near, the road has sun reflection, and the game even manages to run at a smooth 60 frames per second. It's absolutely incredible and a testament to the talented developers at Namco who always love to show off at console launches (Soul Calibur for Dreamcast, anyone?).

There are some minor annoyances that are obviously unavoidable, like how significantly the car models differ when they're on rotating display compared to when you're actually racing them, but this has always been the case in even the most gorgeous racing games like GT4.

Sound

Incredibly, the game sports every soundtrack of every Ridge Racer game up until today. What more could you ask for? Even better, the new tracks are every bit as good (if not better) than the older tracks. Excellent music all around.

And then comes the announce. Stereotypically "rad" announcer, anyone? This guy will drive you up the wall before the race even starts. Other than that, the sound effects are fantastic.

Gameplay

Ah, Namco... how stubborn you can be sometimes. Ridge Racer has absolutely no merit to real physics, which is all fine and dandy except once again your car bounces around like it's made out of rubber and absolutely NOTHING can slow you down, not even running into corners or attempting to spin out in a 360 degree drift. No, if you have the X button pressed, you're going to reach the finish line eventually. It's a bit better than the atrocious Ridge Racer DS, which would send your car to a screeching halt if you so much as looked at a wall or another car, but the opposite of this isn't all that convincing either.

Drifting can be a zen-like experience, but once you start realizing that the game is really controlling the drifts FOR you, you'll be a bit less enthusiastic about landing a "sweet drift". There's a ridiculous amount of courses from every Ridge Racer game known to man (and some not known to man), but they all feel generic and uninteresting. The speed is pretty impressive, but once again the ease of the controls winds up being a detriment to the game.

It's a far better game than the horrific DS version, but it still isn't anything to write home about.

Overall

It has everything it could possibly need to be the killer app of the PSP launch except the most important touch: gameplay. It's still the exceedingly basic Ridge Racer formula that hasn't changed a bit since the mid 1990's, and unless you're a die-hard fan of this kind of gameplay you probably won't be thrilled with this totally unrealistic sequel.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/05