TGS 06: Ridge Racer 7 Hands-On

Death, taxes, and a Ridge Racer game released during a Sony hardware launch--these are the things you can always count on in life. While Sony hasn't confirmed that Ridge Racer 7 will be available with the PlayStation 3 launch, the company's past history with the series indicates that the PS3 and Ridge Racer 7 will more or less be released simultaneously. We got a chance to play the game at a recent Namco Bandai press event, and while the game feels a lot like previous Ridge Racer games, there were a few surprises on hand.

From a driving standpoint, this feels much like the Ridge Racer we've all been playing for years. Sleek, sporty-looking cars dart around a number of different race tracks (five of which were on display during the demo), slipping around corners with the greatest of ease. The cars are built for speed and drift easily around corners--and drifting is the easiest way to fill up your turbo boost meter, which you can initiate for a quick burst of speed. You can have up to three boosts ready to go at any given time, and if you're skilled, you can use a boost in a corner to dramatically increase the rate of speed in a drift and thus build up your boost meter in the process. Ridge Racer 7 will also let you initiate double boosts and even triple boosts (by holding down the L2 and R2 buttons together), which you can engage for even more speed. One crucial addition to RR7 is drafting. Get close enough to a car ahead, and you'll enjoy a tow off of him, in some cases allowing you to whip right past a number of opponents. A small draft meter underneath your nitrous gauge will let you know how much of a draft you're getting off the car in front of you.

If the racing is the heart of the RR7, you might say that the game's extensive customization features will be its face. The producers have included a wealth of customizable parts in the game. As a result, you'll be able to tweak not only how your rides look (using things like custom paint jobs, body kits, and rims), but how your car performs as well (thanks to handling upgrades). Producers estimate that there will be more than 375,000 possible combinations of parts and visual upgrades you'll be able to make on your car. Best of all, you'll be able to take any of your thoroughly modified rides online to share your creations with the world.

The online world will play a big part in RR7. In addition to gamewide leaderboards that will keep track of your progress in various challenges, as well as how you compare to the best racers in the world, the game will support online racing for both individuals and teams.

Of the more than 20 tracks that will be playable in RR7, a handful were on display at the Namco event. The playable tracks represented a good cross section of the kind of environments found in the game, and all of them did a fine job of showing off the graphical prowess of the PlayStation 3. There was Lost Ruins, featuring vaguely Aztec architecture and attractive hanging foliage everywhere; Industrial Drive, which weaves through factories and mazes of piping; and Shadow Caves, which will have you driving through a series of high-speed caves. Oddly, the car we drove had a sort of luminescent glow around it while zipping through the caverns; we're not sure if that will be part of the final game, but it certainly looked strange.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can say about the sound of RR7, as the demo we played wasn't running sound (and the event venue was probably too loud to let us glean much in the way of useful audio observations, anyway). With or without audio, RR7 was instantly familiar with the PS3 controller, even if we missed the rumble features found in previous games. Namco hasn't announced any tilt-functionality support with RR7, but because the game is so tightly tied to the PlayStation series, we expect some sort of announcement soon.

Though no official announcement has been made regarding Ridge Racer 7's release date, we expect the game to be available at or around the launch of the PS3. We'll be bringing you more on the game from the Tokyo Game Show, so be on the lookout for more this week.