The madness begins: IGN hands on with Final Ridge Racers (PSP)

DarienA said:
There are no flawless consoles or handhelds...

It's funny with the PSP it was:

bitch about price...
bitch about whether that was REALLY an analog controller...
bitch about whether real screen was same quality as demo screens...
bitch about whether it was really wi fi enabled....

Did I miss any?

Yes you did.

Battery life.
 
drohne said:
...as long as they artfully avoid showing the screens, lest it suddenly turn into an unintentional psp commercial.
being a nintendo commercial you can be sure they're gonna spin it the right way ;) thing is the psp got itself another weakness, but knowing nintendo marketing they are probably not gonna exploit it, they lack the SONY marketing agressiveness. of course the DS got enough weaknesses itself, so maybe they shouldn't get down in the mud with SONY ;)
 
mumu said:
PSP damage control is strong in this thread. Some PSP friends would even find a way to defend 5 minute load times (and believe it!) :) Loading times is also the reason why the N64 did outsell the PSX after all ... wait a second.

Truth is it's a problem, but Joe Average won't care at all. Unless they are really frequent and interrupt the experience severly. From the Gamespot impressions i'm not sure if they do.

Yep. Frequent and lengthy Loading times have not prevented people from proclaiming Half-Life 2 as Game of the Year. :P
 
sweet impressions, sounds hot!

i'm curious why ridge racers sounds so much more complete than ohter launch titles - does namco started working on this long time ago?
 
Why do some people complain about nitros? Nitros are actually one thing I'm really looking forward to in a racing game. They almost always equal more fun, ever since the days of Hang On (no nitros) and Super Hang ON (which had nitros, and was much better)
 
acklame said:
sweet impressions, sounds hot!

i'm curious why ridge racers sounds so much more complete than ohter launch titles - does namco started working on this long time ago?

Well, Ridge Racer V still remains one of the most polished racers this gen and that was essentially the very first completed PS2 title.
 
it's an OPTICAL MEDIUM people, you knew there was gonna be loading time the day PSP was announced. If you didn't, you're just an ignorant idiot.
 
Speevy said:
So before everyone adopts it, wouldn't you rather hear its downsides exhausted?
Best excuse to troll ever. Must remember that one ;)

mumu said:
I'm expecting some Nintendo commercials where people are playing 4 player DS in one room, and in another room 4 people are playing PSP but spend 1/3 of the time waiting and being annoyed, while the DS room is of course full of excitement and whatnot. Watch it happen.
Not a chance. Nintendo is always too peevish to address the competition directly in the mainstream media. With Sony being as dead serious as they are, I fully expect them to have their heads in the sand and not wanting to call attention to a competitor's product.

You said yourself that most people really don't care about load times, so it's probably not worth doing a mudslinging advert over.
 
yeah, suddenly speevy has turned into Ralph Nader. Hey Speevy, if you want to help the consumer, why not fight something important like crash test improvements in cars?

I've bought a Virtual Boy, Sega CD, 32x, Saturn, Game Gear, Nomad, Master System and a Dreamcast. A bad console choice has never killed anyone... you should work on something that matters.
 
Game share in Ridge Racers?

Ridge Racers is the first game we've found so far to offer multiplayer where only one system needs the game, but we weren't able to convince any of the other players hogging the demo systems to try it out with us.
 
Loading? Like, PS2-style loading? Ugh. :(

Other than that, RR looks like it's gonna be awesome - par for the course.
Finally, RR on PSP seems to be this board's favorite game to obsess over - for better or worse. Why is that?
 
captmcblack said:
Loading? Like, PS2-style loading? Ugh. :(

Other than that, RR looks like it's gonna be awesome - par for the course.
Finally, RR on PSP seems to be this board's favorite game to obsess over - for better or worse. Why is that?

How long have you been around here? The game of the moment changes constantly...

As for RR, a lot of us really love the franchise and we haven't seen a new installment since 2000!
 
Gek54 said:
Nitros are just a speed asist. I dont know any game that requires them.

You can win high end games in Burnout 3 without boosting? Damn you're good.
 
quadriplegicjon said:
..you can press Triangle to cancel (yes, triangle is used to cancel for some reason -- not X)."

Why is this even an issue, dont most games menus use triangle to back out or cancel?
 
drohne said:
cue: "is good music really appropriate for portable games? portable games have classically featured shrill bleeps, the sonic qualities of which permit them to cut through ambient noise! what if you're playing in a crowded airport lobby? won't you need $30 sony-branded headphones just to hear that music? thanks a lot, sony!"
:lol
 
Gek54 said:
Yes unless the car is underpowered.

No, I don't believe you. :)

I know for a fact that there are challenges in Burnout 3 that can't be completed without near constant boosting. Some of the time trials, for instance. They give you a specific car and require you to beat a certain time. It isn't possible to beat that time without boosting.
 
Again, The boosting fucking sucks. How can you welcome something that you can get pretty much anywhere else? If you want to play fucking Burnout, play that. When I want to play Ridge Racer I expect an experience that is unmarred by this "XTREME SPEED OMG!" bullshit. One thing that's always been possible in Ridge Racer is to choose a car that has outstanding grip, meaning you hardly ever drift. I like to play both styles, and I sure as hell don't appreciate being forced to drift longer than necessary just so I can get an ULTRA COOL SUPER SPEED XTREME BOOST YAY DIE DIE DIE. FUCK. They better not put this shit in the next console games, but I bet they will because this game will sell a lot of copies, which is why I'm so up in arms about it.
 
dark10x said:
No, I don't believe you. :)

I know for a fact that there are challenges in Burnout 3 that can't be completed without near constant boosting. Some of the time trials, for instance. They give you a specific car and require you to beat a certain time. It isn't possible to beat that time without boosting.

As long as you dont hit anything and get off good drifts then you are gold with out nitros.
 
Gek54 said:
As long as you dont hit anything and get off good drifts then you are gold with out nitros.

No, I still don't believe you. Some of those trials required PERFECTION even with boost. If you hit ANYTHING at all, you weren't getting the gold. You needed to navigate the course flawlessly WHILE boosting. Have you done this on several of the later indy car trials? I will never believe it until I see someone do it, because I don't believe it's possible. I could navigate those later courses without touching anything and took every single curve with extreme perfection...but without boost, you just weren't fast enough. During the indy car trials, you would essentially NEVER let off the boost. This wasn't something like NFSU where you only use it to a limited degree. You would start boosting right away and never let go until you crossed the finish (and some runs lasted upwards of 5 minutes!).

I found those challenges fun, as it required you to navigate those courses at an incredibly high speed...
 
Gek54 said:
As long as you dont hit anything and get off good drifts then you are gold with out nitros.

I'm gonna have to say that since 90% of the gameplay is designed around boosting... I find your statements highly dubious.... got any movie clips of somebody winning races late in the game without boosting?
 
I love how everyone's already decided that the boosts suck without even touching the game.

Frankly, seeing as it's tied directly into the main game play feature (drifting) I have a feeling it'll add a pretty interesting strategic aspect to the core racing game.

Then again, I haven't played the final version so I'll reserve judgement. Carry on whiners.
 
Part of the appeal of the RR series that even though it's not a sim it's one of the only "pure" racing games left where doing well is all about your driving skill.
It sucks that they're adding fantasy elements like "boosting" I just hope they remove it before the next Ridge Racer on PS3.

Not to say boosting in itself makes the game suck but it definitely puts the game in a different category.
 
seismologist said:
Part of the appeal of the RR series that even though it's not a sim it's one of the only "pure" racing games left where doing well is all about your driving skill.
It sucks that they're adding fantasy elements like "boosting" I just hope they remove it before the next Ridge Racer on PS3.

Not to say boosting in itself makes the game suck but it definitely puts the game in a different category.

How is boosting more fantastical than the actual drifts in all the RR games? Boosting just adds another technique to game. They should add weapons to the next RR game. :lol
 
Vibri said:
Frankly, seeing as it's tied directly into the main game play feature (drifting) I have a feeling it'll add a pretty interesting strategic aspect to the core racing game.

That's a big part of why I have a problem with it. This boost strategy isn't something I'm interested in when I think of a new Ridge Racer. If I want that I'll play one of the myriad games that has this type of gameplay. If I want to be reviewed on how long my drifts are, I'll play Kaido Battle 2. If I want to boost my way to hell and back, I'll play Burnout, but for a more "clean" arcade racing experience, I've always turned to Ridge Racer (and Battle Gear 3, lately), and I'll be sad if this puts an end to that.

Gek54 said:
They should add weapons to the next RR game. :lol

You're going to make me cry.
 
Think the fuss about nitros is a bit much, and Ridge Racer hasn't always been about drifting.

The RR series was originally about an adrenelin rush more than anything else. Drifting in the original games wasn't as beneficial as in the later ones, and in some of the games actually hindered you. And with Rage Racer for example, the speed was ramped up to 'nitro' style levels anyway. The adrenelin rush came from the fear of making even the slightest mistake at those speeds, and in the early games you were punished severely for those mistakes.

I'm reserving judgement till I've played it of course, but it sounds to me like Ridge Racers could be a blend of the styles of both the early and late games in the series. You have the drifting, but combined with the adrenelin rush and fear of mistakes that comes from the nitros. With the added strategy of being able to choose when you use that speed - which could work very well in multiplayer.

To me so far, it's easily the most promising RR game in years. Can't wait to play it.
 
Oh yeah I loved the speeds in Rage Racer at the end...when you got that Pink Pantherish car that blazed along.....burning around the track...sweat pouring down....gingerly monitoring the approaching cars in the rear view mirror.......snaking through the curves of the track when DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you graze the corner for 1 millisecond!
 
Yeah, the rush from the speed of the later cars in Rage Racer combined with the demands of the tracks, and the fear of making a mistake was quite something. And that noise when you did graze the sides - *thwump* - TORTURE!

That noise haunted me it did.
 
TheGreenGiant said:
in case you guys missed it in the other thread. RRPSP has no multishare option. :)

it's currently not yet confirmed whether it has or has not :p

can some GAF JPN ppl go to ginza and confirm it once and for all :lol
 
People are hitting the panic button too soon.
As long as that load time occurs once and not for everytime you replay a level, i don't see the problem.

However, this made me raise an eyebrow :

"with the loading being faster than Sony Computer Entertainment's own Minna no Golf Portable,"

... the fuck???

As said before - as long as that a one shot load burden, then that's okay - if it's got big load times between courses, it's gonna be a right pain in the arse.

6 more days to go....
 
It's a portable that uses an disk media as oppose to a card style.... and people are surprised it has load times? Color me confused....
 
It's not even worth mentioning that the load times will likely decrease as developers become more familiar with the system, is it? No, because you all know that already, right?
 
TheGreenGiant said:
in case you guys missed it in the other thread. RRPSP has no multishare option. :)



Care to wager a ban on that? Because in the PSP options it says 'game share' - and it's yet to be confirmed either way in-game.

Plus, is that really something to smile about? Or are you just feeling a bit threatened? Weird.
 
Top Bottom