Fox's Review: Wipeout Fusion

[Fusion]

Ah yes, Wipeout.  An attempt by some random unknown company to mix F-Zero and Mario Kart into one package.

It sounds like a Jetski game, but leave that for the dead Jet Moto series.


So, the story... It's hundreds of years from present day and racing has gone from vehicles with wheels to much more dangerous vehicles with hovering mechanisms and get this: Weapon caches!  Or at least a space for them.  You can get about 20 weapons total, but each time you get one it's completely random.  No scrolling, no choice, you don't even know what you're gonna get and even then it doesn't seem like half the things you get are useful aside from the Grenades, Shield, and Missile.  Everything else you may as well just use to get to first place.

Story (2/10):
What story?  You race for a team, you win, that's it.  Sure there's a little profile but it's all unrelated to the missingno that is the 'plot'.  At least we were given a general idea of what the time frame is.

Sound (9/10):
Here is where I think the game shines.  It's individual sound effects which never fail to amaze given their variety.  There are quite a number of explosion sounds.  The general weapon sounds impress me as well, as it's stuff I've never heard in any other game (in other words, the sound team actually did work instead of just mishmashing sounds together).  The only reason this gets a 9 is because of the music, which by default is much louder than the sound effects, so you won't hear anything in the menus, and even then you won't hear anything in-game because of the music!  When I turned the music off, however, I was amazed by the game's sound.  Why did Bam! Entertainment choose to have the generic music over the sound?  Oh well, it's better than the overused rap & death metal soundtrack that seems to be in every game nowadays.

Control (8/10):
Game control is both a heavenly light and a burden here.  While your vehicle responds quickly to your motions, it doesn't seem like it responds fast enough.  The turns in the game require you to slow down.  Naturally, in any other racing game, the square button hits the brakes and slows you down.  Obviously this made the game too easy, so there is no braking of any sort.  Hit that square button and if you had a nice weapon, you'll lose it.  On the plus side, you can tilt the left analog stick forward or backward, and your craft will react in that way.  Tilting it forward gets you a little more speed when accelerating, whilst tilting it back... Uh... What does that do again?  I think it makes you go slower.  Anyhow, most of the game is coasting through the turns, hitting the turbo pads, shooting own other vehicles (or slowing them down in this sense), and avoiding the walls.

Other things:

WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THE PAUSE MENU!?  Seriously, you pause a game mid-race and all you see is "continue".  You don't ever know if there are any other options, so you have to scroll blindly, only seeing what your current option is because for some reason the developers obviously wanted you to just continue racing.  And what's with the ability to change your music track on the fly pointlessly?  You hit the select button mid-race and you're only allowed to queue up songs, not preview them to see what you like.  Even then, when you get out of that screen it's back right to racing.

Not only that, but this game has some of the most worthless "cheat codes" ever.  Aside from Infinite Shield, which is far more handy and puts you into more racing and less surviving, every other cheat is something that is entirely pointless.  First off, we have the Animal Vehicles cheat: What the hell!?  Why do we want to play as animals?  Were the guys down at Bam! entertainment bored and put in animals for vehicles?  Next, Infinite Weapons.  Now this may sound like a useful cheat, it is in reality not.  You're given a weapon to start with, and when you get rid of that weapon, you're given another random weapon, which means you can spam the fire button all you like.  When you get out front all of your random weapons become useless, and you'll be dealing with more rapid-fire Proton Cannons (nothing like Iron Man's big cannon) than you can shake a stick at.

Next, we have Super Fast Ship code.  What does this do?  Make the game even more unplayable.  Your ship's acceleration and top speed are pretty much doubled, no matter what you choose.  It also shows off the flaws of the game's engine, because sometimes under this code the game doesn't even register a collision with a wall and you just fly into an eternal abyss of NOTHING.  You don't fall and die like in F-Zero.  No, you mysteriously respawn on the track.

Lastly, Retro Planes.  Another worthless cheat, as all it does is replace all the aircraft with old planes.  Seriously, what were these developers thinking? First you give us animals, now old airplanes?


Why I'm not recommending it for purchase is because:

You start off in the game extremely crippled.  Only 3 tracks and 3 vehicles are available to you from the start, and even then every vehicle has 2 drivers.  One driver is weaker than another all-round, which just makes it rather pointless to try unlocking anything.  Every track has 3 individual courses.  Only 1 of those courses is available in each track from the start.

Nothing surprises me at all with this game, so I give it a 6/10.