"Stick to Balloning" - Sign stuck on the side of a Virgin Train by Mark Thomas, C4

REVIEW: wipEout

GENRE: Futureistic racing

DEVLOPER/PUBLISHER: Psgynosis

PRICE: £20 (around £12 second hand)

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France

Think what you like, but if you're creating a list of influential games that were released on the playstation, you'll find wipEout somewhere. If you havn't heard of this game before, where were you in mid-1995? One of the first to be released for the beast, it was developed in-house by Psygnosis, then still fully owned by Sony Computer Entertainment.

What is it? Well it's hard to explain. It's a fast, unrealistic, futureistic racer. Unrealistic meaning exactly what Violet Berlin was going on about on Panel 4 last week. Futuristic in that it's based on an Anti-gravity (Strange shape cars hovering over a special track) campionship, taking place in 2052 AD. And this baby's so f*cking fast you won't know what hit you.

I'm not kidding, this is FAST.

Here's the situation: You must choose from 8 drivers from 4 teams, AG Systems, Auricom, Quirex & Feisar. Each driver has a veirying skill, and each team has a diffrent standard of vehicle, for example the Feisars have a great Turning Circle but a shite top speed. Like all racing games. Like most racing games also, there are 6 tracks (a 7th is hidden) with vairying difficulty. Nothing new yet then. (There are three modes as well, champ, single and time trial....)

And then you hit the tracks. You start out with your digitial pad on a track that at first seems like hell has hit you, you can't control the bloody thing like a normal racing game for a start. Normally, if you don't turn quickly, you'll hit a wall. And anouther wall, and anouther wall, and anouther, and anouther..........

.....until you finally get the nack of the handling. You'll probably either use a Feisar or an AG for easy steering, or use a fast vehicle and cope with the airbrakes (which you have on the left and the right.). The airbrakes take some getting used to, I've had the game since New Years Eve (1997), and still I havn't learnt how to use them. The Steering is the first hurdle to get over with with this game, but as with most things, have patients and it will pay off.

Untill you try out SilverStream, which is so hard to tackle it makes all that learning seem useless.

But to be fair, the tracks do have a good learning curve, you start out on a venue with a lot of straights, move on to more bends, then some more bends, then the track starts to split, and then finally with silverstream, you wish you knew how to use airbrakes. Didn't say it would be easy.

Added to this you have wepons, which you gain by flying over Star shaped slabs. These consist of Missiles, Rockets, Mines, Shockwaves & Go Faster thingy's. As well as firing them yourself, you can get hit by them. And do they sting..... Don't forget the Go Faster stripes on the floor, too.

So what makes this game soo good? Well it was revolutionary in it's day, only to be surpassed by it's sequel. Other versions of this genre have just been, well crap (E.g Hi Octane, Extreme G). It's possibly the fastest racer you're ever going to come across (and even faster if you do the impossible (or find the cheat) and get to Rapier class), the graphics are good for mid 1995. You may say this has been surpassed now by wipEout 2097. Of course yes , but purists may prefer the earlier version. It's also now incredibly cheap in some stores (due to the platinum release of 2097). Your decision.

Oh, and did I mention the excellent sound track? Most journo's at the time thought wipEout would show the way with music in games. Well it never did (music is still mostly created by an inhouse team) but it was good anyway. Bit of Clubbing past for you.....

GRAPHICS: 7/10 (Obviously now surpassed by 2097)

SOUND: 10/10 (MASSIVE sound track man, INIT!)

GAMEPLAY: 7/10 (Get the Knack of it, and it's great)

LIFESPAN: 9/10 (I WANT TO WIN THAT BLOODY TRACK!!!!!!)

OVERALL: 8/10 Brilliant, but you're Dad won't like it cus he dosn't like the control system....

By PAndroid, Date 9/3/98

Previous Reviews:

Micro Machines V3

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