General/Summary: 4/5
Wipeout Fusion, the 4th installment in the highly underappreciated Wipeout series, makes many excellent improvements to the game with one major flaw: the physics engine. I don't want to turn this into a rant about the inadequacy of this game's physics, so I'll start out with the good stuff.

Gameplay: 4/5
One of the best improvements to the series are the new tracks, of which there are 42, including the reverse courses. Unlike before, the tracks have loops, corkscrews, several shortcuts, and even some interactivity. I like the new freeform areas, but they might take some getting used to for some people. One interesting choice they made is how they decided to start races. An announcer simply says "Ready!........GO!," leaving a nice gap between them with no countdown at all. I got used to it eventually, but it's still a bit annoying.

Overall, the tracks are very well done, albeit slightly buggy in some areas. For example, sometimes you just fly off a jump and don't come back down, which either costs you the race, or results in a huge lead. Also, sometimes you'll hit a corner wrong and your ship will get completely spun around. Another quirk of some of the new track devices is that lock on weapons will acquire incorrect locks, and you end up wasting a weapon. Speaking of weapons, they are, for the most part, a sight to behold. The new super weapons are also well done, although some of them aren't flashy enough. Unfortunately, some of the weapons have some odd bugs, like the gravity bomb throwing ships across, or completely off the course. The opponent's AI also uses the entire assortment of weapons this time around, rather than just sticking to the less powerful ones as it did in the past. This provides for some interesting usage of force feedback when being attacked by some of them, especially the quake. Another new feature to the series is that getting damage will actually effect the look and performance of the ship, which I like, but it can always be turned off.

The league system is another good aspect of the game, along with the ships' upgrade system. The leagues allow you to win money for upgrading your ships, and some of them offer a good challenge. While the beloved race classes are now gone, the ship upgrade system makes up for it. You can upgrade your ships in one of 6 areas, and it will receive a visual augmentation after a certain number of upgrades. There are 4 visual levels for the ships, which could be thought to represent the 4 racing classes of old. The 8 teams are generally well balanced, except that the best team is absolutely the best, and the worst team is absolutely the worst.

In addition to the leagues to conquer, there's also arcade mode, time trials, challenges, and zone mode. The arcade mode gets entirely too easy once you get to the higher upgrade levels (you can always downgrade though), but the time trial, challenge and zone (especially zone) modes are about as difficult as GT3's time trials (which is really hard).

While playing the game, it seems like you're unlocking something new around every turn. You'll find yourself with new ships, new weapons, gallery images, and more as you progress through the game. Disappointingly, it all stops at about the 65% completion mark, and you don't even get anything new after beating zone mode, or even getting 100% in the game.

Zone mode is a rush. you start out going manageably slow (around 800 kmh), and you speed up a bit every 10 seconds. Eventually you get going really, REALLY fast (around 3000 kmh and higher), which, needless to say, requires pretty good reflexes. Pod racing's got nothing on this. However, it would have helped a lot to have pressure sensitivity on more than just one button (that one being the fire button).

Multiplayer is decent. It has some nice multiplayer exclusive weapons, as well as loads of cool customization options (some of which can be used to help out less experienced players). The learning curve is shallower than in the previous wipeouts, so expect your friends to have an easier time with it. It's just too bad there's no elimination mode (although you do get 2 points per elimintaion in any race).

Well, that covers most of the major points, now to the physics. In general, the ships don't have enough inertia when racing. Speed boosts don't carry on like they should. Airbrakes feel more like a device to tighten the turning radius, rather than something used to powerslide around corners. Aside from real jumps, the ships never escape from a fixed altitude above the track. Perhaps worst of all is that pitching the craft has no discernible affect, even when airborne. But, I suppose these changes to the physics had to be made to accomodate for the new track features.

Graphics: 5/5
The graphics are lovely. Ship detail is superb, along with all the damage effects, and they even even have moving pilots. Dust and smoke look great. The track scenery looks ok too, but there's not really a whole lot of time to see it when you're racing. Explosions also look excellent, witha wealth of particle and lighting effects. Slowdown isn't too common, but it does occasionally happen; and when it does happen it's bad. Other than that, the framerate is a nice 60 fps.

Sound: 4/5
The soundtrack is great; it lives up to the previous games, in my opinion. Except the menu music is God-awful obnoxious. The SFX are a step up from the previous games, especially the ship sounds, although a few of the weapon sounds leave something to be desired (especially the orbital laser).

Message Edited by maricam on 07-07-2004 10:58 AM