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Gee, its been so long since I actually sat down and put
some effort into writing one of these. The last couple of have
been last minute rush jobs. (This one almost was). (A rush
job that is, its still last minute, considering that as of right now
the CT goes up in about 6½ hours). Trying to think of
anything new thats happening . . . On Feb. 16, Everquest
Online Adventures comes out, which means Ill be freed from
my non-disclosure agreement, so Ill have a rockin article
next time about the game, and about the beta process. Ill
also have a review of Unreal Tournament 2003 coming up.
Other than that, I dont have anything right now to rant or talk
about, so . . .
Wipeout Fusion is the sequel to Wipeout, which I
believe is a game for N64. The game is sorta reminiscent of
Pod Racing. You race against a host of other racers, all in
little ships that float just above the ground, and basically
consist of some engines strapped to a cockpit. The whole
gimmick to the game is that in addition to racing to get first
place, your ships can pick up various weapons to unleash on
each other. Weapons range from a photon cannon to homing
missiles to earthquake generators to black-hole generators.
Ships range from light and fast, to flying armored bricks
(think miniature space shuttle with booster rockets). The in
addition to a racing circuit mode, the game has an arcade
mode, a challenge mode, multiplayer, speed trials and more.
Plot. Not much plot here; its just a racing game. The
booklet has some background information, but its all rather
random and irrelevant. The thing is supposed to take place
sometime in the future. The racers all have an anti-grav unit,
a shield generator, and a weapons system multiplier (you pick
up weapons from pads on the ground, and when you use it,
your damage is multiplied by your weapon damage
multiplier). The booklet also has pointless background
information on all the pilots, but that space could have been
better used to give more detailed information on how some of
the game modes work, and exactly what some of the weapons
do, and what the ship stats mean. (The whole pamphlet is
rather sketchy and unhelpful.)
Graphics. The graphics are fairly good, standard PS2 stock.
(You know, its rather hard to talk about console game
graphics, because given that the hardware is always the same,
and the graphics engines probably the same (not quite sure
how thats done for consoles) for every game, theres not
much to talk about. The scenery for all the tracks is varied,
and generally visually pleasant, even if the actual track is
anything but pleasant to navigate. Locations vary from ice
and snow, to jungle and rain, to arid rocky places, to
uninspired futuristic-looking cities. Ummm . . . yeah . . .
Sound. Sound is ok, lots of effects, game announcements like
"Player Eliminated" and "Go!" Also whenever you pick up a
weapon, there is a vaguely feminine sounding garbled voice
that tells you the weapon you just picked up. Engine noises,
thats about it. Oh! Except for the music soundtrack, which
you can pick from kind of like a radio. Most of the tracks are
fairly amusing.
Gameplay. Gameplay is actually quite good. You control
using an analogue stick, L2 and R@ control your brakes
(more on brakes in a second). L1 fires your current weapon, X
is gas, (*goes to look a controller*) and Square ditches your
weapon if you dont want to use it. Basically, you go racing
through the course for three laps. There are brightly colored
little pads on the ground, and when you drive over it, you get
a random weapon (random regardless of the pads color).
Most weapons fire only once. For example if you get a
homing missile, it locks on to someone (surprisingly its an
instantaneous lock. The second you begin to acquire
someone, you can shoot and it fully homes in), and then you
fire, and thats it. Needless to say, you can spend large
portions of a lap without a weapon, because once someone
goes over a pad, it is deactivated for about 5 seconds or so,
which means following someone to try to pass can be very
frustrating. Not all weapons are a single "unit" though. If
you pick up a grenade, you only get to fire once, but you fire
them 3 abreast, at the same thing. Other items include a
photon cannon, which sucks, and is annoyingly prevalent
everywhere. About every 3rd to 4th weapon you get is the
bloody photon cannon. You get 25 shots that do minimal
damage, but can slow your target down a little. Hold the fire
button down, and you can unload them rapid fire. (We
generally discarded them fishing for better stuff, unless there
was someone immediately in front of us to shoot.) You can
also get standard mines (set of 5) and grav-mines (which stop
whomever triggers it dead in their tracks). By far the coolest
weapon you get is Quake. Quake sends a big wave through
the ground that near as we can tell, goes through the length of
the level, hitting everyone in front of you (or behind you if
you fire backwards). It is really cool. There are of course
other weapons, but this covers the basics, and Im tired of
talking about them. There are other pickups that include a
turbo, autopilot, and temporary invulnerable shields. Now for
braking. The instruction manual doesnt over it very well, and
we didnt even know how they worked or what they did until
halfway through when we unlocked a ship that had high
starting braking. You have a left and right brake, and to use
it, break on the side of the turn you are trying to make, and it
makes the turn sharper at the cost of speed. To notice
anything with the starting ships, youll probably need to buy it
up some. To unlock most stuff, you play the league mode. A
league is a racing circuit. You pick a ship, race 3-7 tracks,
and you get points depending on what place you come in, and
how many people you kill. At the end, you get money, and if
you got first place in the league, you unlock the new league.
You can then use your money to upgrade aspects of your ship.
(Max speed, acceleration, braking power, turning rate,
weapon power, and shield strength). Every two league you
can do a special 1 on 1 race to unlock the next ship (about 8
total). As you progress, you also unlock new tracks, new
weapons, and new modes.
I N T E R M I S S I O N
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