Set a few years before the original Wipeout, Wipeout 2048 has a bit of a "street" look to it... well, it has about as much of a street look as a futuristic hovership racing game can have, anyway. The tracks have a more lived-in look to them, from what I saw, but that doesn't change the core of the action. You're still racing weird hovership things, firing weapons, using your air brakes, and listening to Orbital.
Zone mode will return to Wipeout in 2048 with new art styles to keep it looking fresh, and the game will have multiple control methods. I tried using the tilt functionality for steering and got used to it reasonably quickly, but I still did better using the analog stick. Considering you'll have to tilt the whole screen to play that way, I'm guessing that analog stick control will be a better choice for most players.
Wipeout 2048 will be available on launch day for the NGP, whenever that is. It will also ship with a CrossPlay (their term) feature that allows you to connect to PlayStation 3 players. This probably means that some of the tracks from the PS3 game seem to be finding their way into 2048, but it's also possible that the required update that will be coming for Wipeout HD players could lead to another track pack on that end, as well.
The game will make use of the NGP's cameras by taking photos or short video clips of the winning racer and sending them around to your online opposition and trophies that you earn can apparently be viewed in some kind of augmented reality style. That part wasn't on display, so I'm not sure how cool that'll be.
Key, of course, to any racing game is its sense of speed. Though the demo was set to a lower speed class, the game already has a good-looking frame rate and looks nice and fast. In short, it looks like a Wipeout game. It feels like a Wipeout game.
What, you don't believe I played it? You think I'd make something like this up? OK, fine, I've got some proof, courtesy of the PlayStation Blog.
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