Way back in 1995, the original WipEout on the PS1 had gotten a lot of people’s attention worldwide who were planning on buying a Playstation just in time for the Holiday season. Like the F-Zero series on Nintendo consoles WipEout is pretty much similar a racing game through tracks and zones in a futuristic world.

Way back in 1995, the original WipEout was released on the first PlayStation, and garnered a lot of attention worldwide from people who were planning on buying a PlayStation just in time for the holiday season. Like the F-Zero series on various Nintendo consoles, the WipEout games involve very high speed racing set across a series of tracks and zones in a futuristic world. Similar to most racing games, there is no real story other than your own desire to earn medals and points in order to become the best racer in the game, unlocking new vehicles and a few surprises along the way. WipEout HD Fury contains the original WipEout HD game, as well as the Fury expansion.

Gameplay: The controls in WipEout HD Fury are quite simple, regardless of whether you’ve played a racing game before or not.  If you’ve played any of the previous WipEout games before you should feel right at home with the latest instalment to the series, and you’ve got the option to play Single-Races, Zones, and Time Trail. In a similar fashion to the MotorStorm series, you play through 8 races on each section and start going up to the highest one, in order to become the best racer. A feature new to the series, which was originally included in the Fury pack, is Detonator. This is kind of like a horizontal Space Invaders-type game, and sets you going around the track shooting bombs in front of you.

You’ve got a choice on what vehicle/speed racer you want to choose, and they’ve still got the same race teams WipEout veterans will be familiar with, from FEISAR, EG-X to Goteki 45. If you drive through a red cross on the track you will collect a power-up and then can fire your weapon to attack other racers or use it to get your energy back after being damaged. If you run over a blue arrow you will be given a small but vital speed boost to catch up or stay in front of the rest of the pack.

You can also use the Sixaxis motion sensor to tilt the PS3 controller to steer left and right like a steering wheel, but you can easily turn that off via the options options and just use the L2 and R2 buttons to get around tight corners.

Graphics and Sound: Quite possibly the best feature about WipEout HD would be the stunning graphics, especially for a racing game. If you are a WipEout fan you might recognize some of the tracks here, and that’s because most of the tracks are actually based on tracks from the PSP WipEout games.  Most of the race tracks are stunning enough, but if you are playing through a Zone race or Detonator mode the graphics are slightly different but even more visually stunning (in a similar style to REZ on PlayStation 2).

The 1080p graphics and the detailed environments and visuals are highly well done, especially considering this was originally just a downloadable PSN Store release. Not on that, but the game is fully 3D compatible if you have a TV capable of displaying 3D images, but even if you don’t, the game is still breathtaking to look at. The soundtrack, although not as seminal as the soundtracks from previous games, is nonetheless excellent. You also have the option to listen to your own music if you have any MP3s on your PS3. There isn’t any voice acting since it’s just a racing game.

Another clever thing you’ll notice during loading times are advertisements for various products, including Lynx. It’s quite rare for modern games to include such obvious advertising during loading times, but they don’t seem to interfere and it’s a clever way of bringing in additional revenue from a game, and may account for the relatively low price (now free!) of WipEout HD Fury.

Overall: The full WipEout HD Fury edition of the game contains a full game, and almost another full game’s worth of DLC with the Fury pack. If you are a Trophy fanatic  then be warned; it’ll take you a while to earn all trophies and some of them can be tough, including one which requires you to do 99 laps. You can also play with up to 8 players online, playing through the original game’s content or that of the Fury expansion.

This is an essential purchase for any fan of the WipEout series, and one of the best looking PS3 games around. It would benefit from some original tracks, as opposed to the remade tracks from the PSP games, but that’s about the only real criticism of the game.

Could well be the best downloadable racing game for the PS3, and comes crammed with rewarding content and fantastic visuals.


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