WipEout HD Review
Wow. O. That was. O my god. Ha. These are just a few of the things I said while I was playing this game. The controversy of the seizure gave this game a slight curiosity that you don't get with any other game. However finally it has landed on the PSN even after it was promised all the way back in June.
If you have never played a WipEout game in the past then lets get this straight, you go fast, you blow things up and it always looks good and goes with a kick ass beat. Yes, the music is back and it gives the game a good kick to it. While the graphics are just, well there are no words, this is what the PS3 was meant to do. The textures are fantastic on this game and the Snapshot function gives you the chance to take pictures of the the explosions or the super fast speed of the game, while looking at the glorious graphics.
The career mode in this game is basic. There are three game modes, Race, Time Trial and Zone. Race is your basic 8 player race around the track. Time Trial again is your basic get around the track in the time given. Finally, Zone (which made an appearance in WipEout Pulse) where you go around the track and each time it gets progressively faster and you just have to keep going until you crash. So the career is basically this, there are eight events and in each of these events are 'x' amount of races, time trails or zones to get medals in. Then you move onto the next.
One of the most important choice you have to make is what ship to pick. There are eight from 
the get go and four to unlock. Each ship has two more paint schemes to unlock and that is it really. If you race with just one class you get more Loyalty Points which go towards unlocking paints schemes. There are eight tracks that are from the PSP WipEout games, Pure and Pulse. They all vary in look and feel, from the Megamall to the classic Sol-3, and each range from long stretches to winding turns where you must uses your air brakes to get around.
Once you have mastered the single player you can take your skills online where up to eight of your friends including yourself can race together. You can either do one race or a tournament of up to 12 races. This is very fun, especially racing against your friends.
Finally, there are the weapons in the game and like any other WipEout game they play a very important part. There are basic rockets, homing rockets, shields, boost and so on. You have the choice of using the weapon or absorbing the energy of the weapon to regenerate the shields on your ship. This plays a very important part in the game especially if you play on the highest speed and there are four different levels of speed if I didn't mention that. Also there are three AI difficulties to accompany the speeds so you can find your perfect winning but not cheating settings. There is also a setting that you can switch on which will basically stop you from hitting the walls of the track, which in my eyes is cheating.
The only down side to the game is that there aren't many tracks. You will get around all of the tracks in about 16 minutes and after that you can reverse the track which gives it a bit of a difference. But at the end of the day 8 tracks just aren't many. Hopefully there will be multiply downloadable tracks in the future and if so this game is definitely worth the £11.99.
Overall this game is fantastic. The progression of the game is perfect and will hold your hand if you need it to be held. The sound fits the style of the game as always and all in all this is a bargain seeing how much you get for just a small price of £11.99 which is about $20. You get fast speeds, great online play, great graphics, a head nodding sound track and of course the game. You can't go wrong.
