Retro|Spective 143: Wipeout

[Neon Ignition]

History in Games:
1995 - Wipeout
1996 - Wipeout 2097
1998 - Wipeout 64
1999 - Wipeout 3
2002 - Wipeout Fusion
2005 - Wipeout Pure
2007 - Wipeout Pulse
2008 - Wipeout HD
2012 - Wipeout 2048
2017 - Wipeout Omega Collection


Overview:
An early poster child for Sony's debut and the arrival of the 3D era, the game encapsulated the dramatic shift in style as well as visuals between the 16 bit and 32 bit eras. The futuristic racer is, at its core, Mario Kart with different class vehicles racing around tracks and using weapons picked up on each lap to take out the competition. However, with its use of health bars and air banking the game carried it own unique sense of learning curve to master and a distinct grown up style to suit the platform and company it was launching with. Despite this the series made a couple of forays onto rival formats but despite this it remains a series that feels distinctly tied within the DNA of PlayStation.










Share your thoughts on the series as well as what its peaks and lows were. Does it still have a future?

[Leon Retro]

I didn't like the original Wipeout very much, because it felt a bit clunky and annoying to play. I did like 2097 though -- it was more refined in all areas and I found it more playable. Wipeout 3 is my favourite from the series on the PS1 -- it has a really clean, attractive aesthetic that appeals to me, and I like how it feels to play.

I only played Fusion a few times back in the day and thought it was pretty good. I have it in my collection, so I really need to go back to it. I remember it had quite a negative rep for some reason, so it will be interesting to see what people were moaning about.

I have Wipeout HD and the Omega Collection, but haven't played them much. But on the other hand -- I always go back to the F-Zero series and enjoy all the games. So I've always been very much focused on F-Zero when it comes to futuristic racers. Although, as a fan of the genre, I have collected most of them over the years.

[DeathAdder]

Never really understood the appeal of the first one, although it looked and sounded great. Loved 2097, but fell out of interest with the series after that, although I enjoyed the free dlc with Pure.

[Cepp]

First one was balls hard for me back in the day, didn't click with me at all but 2097 and 3: SE were great. I've gone back to the first game since then and gelled with it a lot more, but aesthetically its a bit garish compared to later entries. Maybe due to changing stlye trends at the time?

There's an old youtube video showing someone run a near enough perfect time trial race in Wipeout 2097, and I still go back to watch it every now and then. It's almost mesmerising.

[wakka]

@Cepp Love that really satisfying to watch.

I really like Wipeout. It always clicked with me much more than the F-Zero games. It's that feeling of weight the craft have, like they're genuinely heavy pieces of machinery that through some technological magic are able to float. When you bring them gliding around a corner with the airbrakes without touching the sides, it's a unique feeling. By comparison I couldn't get on with how F-Zero craft feel kinda glued to the track.

The first entry I played would've been the single track demo of 2097 (which I think was on Demo One, maybe?). I really liked that and played it over and over. The first proper one I owned was 3, which was a fantastic game and which I played lots of. I remember liking the grungier look of 2097 more, but 3 had a really cool aesthetic all of its own. It was sort of the Ridge Type 4 of Wipeout. Chilled out, laidback, clean and light. Played it a ton when it was contemporary, both in single player and two player.

I skipped Fusion due to poor reviews, but liked Pure on PSP, although I don't remember it that well to be honest. Naughtily I pirated it via the very earliest ISO loader for PSP, for which I had to import a 1GB Memory Stick Duo for about £90 from VG+ (I'd never do that now!).

Of the ones I've played, that leaves 2048 and HD/Fury.

HD I loved - a brilliant megamix of tracks that ran beautifully at 60fps and just looked terrific. So much fun to revisit these. I was living with my best mates at the time and we got a bit obsessed with it, doing runs over and over and trying to beat each other in multiplayer and each other's times on time trial. Bags of fun. Great music too. We even made our own playlists of Wipeout-appropriate tunes and also put them in when we got tired of the built-in tracks. Zone mode was amazing, too.

Fury I never liked or really understood, or bothered much with to be honest. I never was really interested in the combat aspect of Wipeout. Mario Kart does that bit a lot better IMO. Wipeout is all about the feel of flight.

2048, I'm going to go against the grain and say that I really liked. Yeah, it's not perfect. Yeah, it's not the best entry. Yeah, it has loads of performance issues. Yeah, the gameplay is slightly off. But I loved two things - one, that it was a proper, all-new Wipeout game on my new import Vita. Two, its aesthetic. I loved that it went back to the earlier days of Wipeout racing, and it was all a bit grungier and grubbier than the clean futurism of something like Sol 2.

And there's a bonus third thing I really liked about 2048 - if you bought the HD/Fury DLC, which I did, then you could link up with a PS3 playing it over LAN. So my mates would be on HD on the PS3, and I'd be joining them via the Vita. The frame rate and resolution were all over the place to be honest, but it was really cool and something that both felt technologically awesome and was just a lot of fun to play together.

I still haven't picked up Omega, although I've been tempted. I'm waiting to play it in VR. But I still don't have a headset, and now I'm kinda holding out for the second generation one to be honest. So hopefully within the next couple of years I'll finally get the chance to sample that, and get obsessed with Wipeout all over again

[Asura]

I only played Fusion a few times back in the day and thought it was pretty good. I have it in my collection, so I really need to go back to it. I remember it had quite a negative rep for some reason, so it will be interesting to see what people were moaning about.

I can tell you; I played it last week and it's just bad. It doesn't feel like WipEout, and I think it engages in one of the worst trends that seemed to hit racers of that era - it has tracks where the track route changes each lap. I've always hated that feature in racing games though that's a personal gripe.

It runs fine and looks... Solid. As in it isn't glitchy and the framerate is fine. Just it feels really soullless and visually barren. It was the first game in the series not to involve Designer's Republic and it really shows.

The graphic design in WipEout is, generally, wonderful. You might call DR pretentious with their "industrial maximalist minimalism" but they really made something timeless. The designs for WipEouts 1, 2 and 3 still look wonderful today.

Fusion came out in 2002 and it looks like it. You can tell from the fonts, from the UI. WipEout 1, 2 and 3 were bold and innovative. They were genuinely cool. Fusion wasn't cool then and it looks awful now. It looks like a follower, not a leader, of visual trends.

As you can play WipEout 3 on PS2, there's little reason to play Fusion in 2020.

Fusion UI:



WipEout 3 UI:

I still haven't picked up Omega, although I've been tempted. I'm waiting to play it in VR. But I still don't have a headset, and now I'm kinda holding out for the second generation one to be honest. So hopefully within the next couple of years I'll finally get the chance to sample that, and get obsessed with Wipeout all over again

Still one of the best VR games. I really wish Sony would make it multiplatform. These days nothing's impossible but I don't see it happening.

[Asura]

Sorry to self-quote, but I'm in a ranting mood. What's the deal with this?! It was all over the place.

Firstly, what's the visual metaphor? What does the design represent? I can't place it to anything. It just seems to be this weird clash of visual elements. The grid in the background... Is it meant to evoke a spreadsheet? A maths exercise book? Is it meant to look like an interface from a high-tech computer? I can't tell, and that's the problem.

The 3D head is both this terrible cartoony thing and not relevant to the game. It's true that in the early games each team had 2 ships with a named pilot, evoking Formula 1, but this is utterly irrelevant to the games and should've been dropped by now (this was the last game in which that concept features, I think).

The fonts are awful. That screenshot mangles them a bit as it's emulated, but they weren't exactly great in the original game. And what is going on with the blueish colour palette? It's meant to be a high-tech racer, not a box of Milk Tray; it puts me in mind of a silk box containing crystal glasses given as a wedding gift.

It's all totally functional. Like, it's perfectly legible, the UX is fine, it's clear what everything does... That's all fine. And don't get me wrong, this is something people take for granted but it isn't a given tha these things are the case; someone has to put the work in for that. I'm also not having a go at the dev who made it, because they were probably working to a tight deadline within a specific styleguide, and the style they went for was very commercial.

But it's naff.

WipEout should not be naff.

[wakka]

Lol, I'm loving this rage. Let the hate flow through you!!

It's a goddamn horrible design.

[Brad]

Wipeout VR owns absolutely everything. It’s one of the most perfect games ever made.

[Leon Retro]

But it's naff.

WipEout should not be naff.

So... it's back to F-Zero GX.

[Neon Ignition]

With this push on PC releases for certain older PS4 titles Omega Collection would make a great candidate

[Asura]

With this push on PC releases for certain older PS4 titles Omega Collection would make a great candidate

Yeah; that's what I meant earlier. Sony must know if it goes multi-platform, every VR headset owner will buy it, as it has a justified reputation as one of the best VR games - in my opinion, the best VR racing game.

That being said, along with Blood & Truth and a few others, it's one of PSVR's tentpole franchises if Sony really are committed to the platform.

Just worth thinking "never say never" these days. I would pay £40 for a Steam version in a heartbeat.

[Hohum]

Big fan of the series on PS1 (particularly Wipeout 3/SE as it's so polished), but kinda lost interest after that. Vaguely remember playing Wipeout 64 years ago and thinking that wasn't bad, but I encountered a weird bug that got progressively worse as you made championship progress (win a race, medal screen shows, but struggled to get off that screen as it was reluctant to respond to button presses? Once I got quite far in it was impossible to get off said screen...).

[dataDave]

Big fan of the series on PS1 (particularly Wipeout 3/SE as it's so polished), but kinda lost interest after that.

Check out Ballistic NG if you have a PC. It sits between Wipeout 2097 and Wip3out. You can even load in the sound and music packs from the PSX games as well as all of the classic ships. My muscle memory transferred right across.

It's the best racer I've played in years. I've been putting a lot of time into it lately. Works great at a high resolution and frame rate.

One of the best-known Skyrim modders (EnaiSiaion) has been putting out loads of amazing tracks for it, too.

[Brad]

Might get that. Does VR and hotas too! I think wipeout and elite are the two best be games I’ve played. Would be nice to have a wipeout replacement on pc.