Blindingly fast with an amazing frame rate.
The game is fairly simple to understand, get to the finish first. You might be thinking, that’s not much different from any other racer, right? Well maybe, but then again, you cant fire a missile or drop a bomb in those other racers.
Wipeout takes you from slower-than-school boring to a wicked fast blur with various speed settings. To obtain the higher speed settings you must complete the one before it and so on. The game has a total of 5 speed settings, the last being phantom, it’s insane…’Nuff said. The more average speed settings will appeal to a wide range of people, but unfortunately to get them you must first suffer through Vector, possibly the slowest racing experience available. Although it is slow, Vector allows you to adjust yourself with the controls and inner workings of Wipeout until you get accustomed to using the PSP’s single control stick.
The graphics in Wipeout are some of the sharpest graphics on the PSP, not necessarily because they are very detailed (which they are) but because the frame rate never noticeably drops. There is so much going on with weapons being fired, explosions on the track and the background all going at once which is amazing for a handheld to still keep that insane frame rate going. Not only are the graphics great, but the frame rate itself pays off for any noticeable bad spots.
I think that perhaps the most interesting feature is the music; the music is from a variety of artists, who all do techno style music! The game features over a dozen tracks, and the best part is that the game features a music list where you can conveniently turn off music tracks you do not like, so that they won’t play in game.
One last great side of Wipeout Pure is the seamless downloadable content. Simply fire up Wipeout next to a hotspot, select downloads and there are a variety of ships and tracks to choose from that fits seamlessly right into the game. The only downside is that it eats up space from your memory stick.
Overall Wipeout is a great racer that shows off what the PSP can do and how fun games for a handheld can be. I highly recommend this to any racing fan.