Ok, getting a bit further in Wipeout. Cleared the 2048 since all elites, working on all elites in the 2049 season atm. Finished the first prototype event.
This game is quite good and it really shakes up the Wipeout formula a bit. The last few games all just sort of felt the same. Awesome same, but same old same. Especially HD & Fury if you had played the PSP games to death since HD & Fury didn't have new tracks.
Things that stick out as unique in this one:
-Dividing the weapon picks to offensive and defensive. This sort of works because it makes you choose at any given moment whether you want to potentially gain, health, a boost, or shield, or whether you want to gain a weapon to take out the ships in front of you. I usually just go for defensive pickups and try to drive perfect lines not fighting anyone and just using turbos and shields.
-Dividing the ships beyond just speed stats. Having different ships types be able to use different weapons (like SPEED ships not ever getting quake) makes this the first Wipeout game I've ever played where I'm not just picking one ship and using it the whole game. I'm actually shuffling between ships depending on the race. Sometimes I'll even go for a slower ship the first time on a new race track in order to learn the track design and make a good racing path. Using fighter over speed on the thinner more twisty tracks and speed on the wider straight away tracks.
-The new racebox works fine, though miss having more options at the start. I prefer to do speed lap on a new course before I race on it for instance.
-Speaking of speed lap, dislike that it's not an event anymore. Also dislike that for time trial, which is an event, there's no ghost ship to help you.
-The interface is really slick, being able to see the leaderboards and your friend's scores on a race is good. Would like them to go one step further in a shatter kind of way and kind of give you friend goals to reach as you race a map. Like when you start a race, tell you that the time to beat for the next friend is "______"
-New zone mode and it's retro atari/intellevision style is great.
-The new tracks are godly and it's incredibly impressive at how many BRAND NEW tracks there are, since there hasn't been a wealth of new Wipeout tracks in some years. Not only that, but the design is fantastic, with all kinds of splits and challenging turns; the art design and TEXTURE QUALITY & VARIETY is absolutely the best on Vita and looks like a true and true PS3 game. The lightning is pretty crazy with all the tracks and weapon effects everywhere. It really is the best looking game on a handheld.
-The downside is that the tracks are so visually busy that the first few times through them I have trouble seeing where the track is and is going. But after a few races on any given track it's not a problem and it feels great to get the layouts down in your head.
-I'm not touching the online racing because I'm playing the US version on my JP account and I can't access online vs. play. I'm not much of an online gamer, so I don't mind.
All in all, I can't put the game down. It's just that good. I have to keep replaying every race until I get an Elite Pass on it and between the game modes and the track # + reverse tracks x 4 speed levels, there's a ton of tracks to do it and it seems like a meaty game. Wipeout, Hot Shots, and Uncharted are all pretty damn top-tier portable game stuff.
Also, the back of the package talks about racing PS3 owners. I remember them saying the PS3 version would get these tracks and this version would get the PS3 tracks. Is this still planned? I'd love to race these new tracks @60fps on PS3 and it'd be awesome to have even more great tracks to play on the Vita version.
