Next for this week I should write about Wipeout3 for the Playstation.
Wipeout 3 is the best damn racing game ever made. This is fact.
Actually calling it a game is a little misleading. Wipeout 3 is more like a digital drug for twitchy zen speed game freaks who hate to blink. But it is not a traditional racing game with an authentic simulation of hot cars but it is indeed a psycho mind fuck that sets your brain into an alpha state and then has it's way with you with it's looping insanely fast tracks and ear bleeding techno music of the gods. I literally have to stop playing the game and take blinking breaks.
No it is not about surfing.
Wipeout started out well enough as a very early Playstation and Saturn game that was a 3d spiritual descendant to the Super Nintendo classic F-Zero. But then it evolved into a mutated higher state of development with the next game. Wipeout XL or Wipeout 2097 depending on what continent you live on and then finally to return two years later as the greatest so called racing game to grace the PS one or any system Wipeout3. In fact this game was the first game that I got for my Playstation and it brought me back to the land of game console from PC/Mac gaming.
You see it is all the fault of the British. The bad teeth having metric using Brits love techno music, F-1 racing and cutting edge graphic design.
It all started at Psygnosis game studios who is now owned by Sony Europe. They formed an unholy alliance with the modern Bauhaus of graphic design The Designers Republic. Psygnosis was designing a racing game that was not based on cars but anti gravity craft in a realistic yet cyberpunk world. The Designers Republic would help them craft the world of Wipeout with fonts, layout and general coolness. The game oozes coolness.
Wipeout3 runs on the most advanced graphic engine that I have seen on the wee Playstation. It runs at 60fps in the highest resolution 640X480 with transparent objects, dynamic colored lighting, particle effects and no slow down ever.
The tracks are not really flat 2d but fully 3d with hills turns and general madness that normal racing game just whimper at in comparison.
The music is the world's best progressive drum and base with elements of Trance. The soundtrack to WipeoutXL was a best seller in the UK and there is choice tracks on this one with Orbital, Prodigy, Sasha and Underworld. All of the Wipeout games use a rare feature of the PS One where once the game has loaded you can open the tray and pop in any music CD and play that instead of the pre selected music. I don't really do this much but when I showed BBQ he thought that it was extra spiffy.
The sick thing is that this game can now be found for ten bucks at some stores and an item of such quality deserves to be in the Playstation Greatest Hits Collection in reproduction until the end of time.
I decided to get a PS2 when I heard that Wipeout Fusion was coming out for it.
In conclusion Fuck Gran Tourismo, Fuck Ridge Racer this is the racing game that I will sell my soul for. Every game event that a next Wipeout game is not announced at I cry a little death.
One of my best friends is all about the Wipeout games. I thought he was going to have a freakin' aneurysm when they pushed Wipeout Fusion back two different times. I can't play these types of games, so I have to assume they are as good as you say they are.
I think of them more of a psychotropic drug than a game. But yes they are good and it would be the last game that people with motion sickness and Pattern epilepsy should play. It would be tied between that and Rez.
I was wondering your opinions are on the protype tracks of Wipeout3. I thought the plain polygon look was pretty cool.
Wipeout 3 runs in the PSX's "hi-res" mode of 640x240 - it does not run at the interlaced 640x480 mode, however.