Points of Review!

Star Review: Wipeout (PSX)

by Virgil Scott

Many games seem to rely on luring you into doing some monotonous task using cheap bait - new weapons, power-ups, cheats and whatnot. You put up with hours of torment and frustration just for the sake of progressing through the game. It is satisfying when you finally beat it, but sometimes it hardly seems worth it. You shouldn't be playing the game to finish it, play to have fun!

Wipeout isn't about 'unlocking'; almost everything is available to you from the outset. There's no shifty looking gameplay system that needs to have its tedium covered up by a flimsy reward scheme. The incentive to play comes straight from the play itself. That's what I really look for in a game - I just ask myself "is this fun?" The thing is though, if you get to the point where you're asking yourself that, it's usually because the answer's no.

When you're really enjoying the game you don't tend to have time to reflect on whether or not it's any good, you just keep playing. And playing. And... oh look, there's some new mode that's been unlocked - I think I'll play some more.

Wipeout can be quite unforgiving at times - just the slightest brush with a barrier and your ship will pretty much stop dead. This is something that Psygnosis acknowledged and amended in the sequel. It can shatter your morale. On the upside though, it feels all the more satisfying when you manage one of those rare laps in which you don't collide with anything but your opponents. Actually, satisfying isn't the right description, I'd imagine it's more like the feeling you'd get from winning the lottery a couple of times. You don't even need to manage a whole lap, just hit the 'sweet spot' racing line through a particularly tricky corner or glide through a chicane on the high of a nitro - it's really, really beautiful.