Roads? Where We're Going We Don't Need... Roads.
We've finally gone hands-on with Ridge Racer: Unbounded. We crashed.
Published: January 20, 2012
The video games industry is a peculiar beast. When one game destroys the sales charts, every publisher wants some of that sweet, sweet cheddar. The problem, of course, is that plenty of games were there before the hundred-million blockbuster releases and it's not unfair to say they fell under a massive shadow. Namco's Ridge Racer series has been as much a part of the PlayStation lexicon as any Crash Bandicoot or even a Ratchet and/or Clank. The series was once synonymous with PlayStation, much like WipEout -- due in no small part to the fact that Namco and Sony has something of a sincere buddy-buddy relationship.
They were the original hardware bros, taking the core guts from a PlayStation system on Sony's end, then retooling them by way of Namco, creating an arcade platform from the beefed up silicon, which inevitably then became a home console game on Sony hardware. It was a beautiful cycle that gave us some of the best arcade racing (to say nothing of fighting) games on the market. The synergy was beautiful, and though we speak of the partnership in past-tense, it's still very much alive and well.
It's just not in effect here. See, as Namco's core franchises have gotten on in years, it was starting to become clear that some of those simple arcade formulas needed little injection of something new. In the case of the latest Ace Combat game, that was handled by the internal Project Aces team (with a little outside consultation for the story), but with the newest Ridge Racer, Namco has gone external, tapping the considerable talents of Finnish developer Bugbear (of FlatOut fame) to build something that, like Assault Horizon, feels like it got a healthy injection of Burnout.
This is something many Japanese publishers are attempting; a kind of olive branch extended to Western audiences in an effort to make the games more globally palatable. Forgetting for a moment the fact that the games' inherent Japanese-ness was part of the appeal, there's at least a breath-of-fresh-air factor to be considered. And no, for all you purists out there, this isn't getting a mainline numerical title (a concept tested with the ill-received R: Racing Evolution), so you can at least rest easy knowing your "true" Ridge Racer series hasn't been tainted.
Namco described the underlying concept of the game early last year as a sort of peek into what long-time series mascot Reiko gets up to when she's not playing eye candy at the starting line of all those normal Ridge Racer courses (or, uh, breaking her heel -- you still have one of the greatest intros ever R4). Apparently she favors slamming through walls and other opponents alike in rides of questionable handling.
Though there were some unfortunate technical difficulties that forced us to play solo offline instead of online head-to-head with other members of the gaming press, Unbounded does indeed offer online races, and better, will let players create their own maps to share with others. Here's hoping we'll get a chance to take a peek at that before the game hits, but given that this was the first time we'd gotten hands-on time with the game at all, we were more than content to see how it all felt in single-player.
We sat down with one section of Shatter Bay, the game's city-wide set of race courses in the hopes of joining The Unbounded, a gang of street racers led by one Kara Shindo vying for control of the city, cops and other racers be damned. By notching big wins and earning stars, you'll earn respect that serves as both a way to level up, unlocking new vehicles and customization options, plus unlocks new sections of the city with their own race types and setting-based courses. The part of the city we explored was heavily industrial, teeming with smoke stacks and fairly run-down streets, though a cursory glance at other parts of the city seemed to indicate there'll be far more variety, including plenty of those gleaming skyscrapers and freeways to tear ass around.
They were the original hardware bros, taking the core guts from a PlayStation system on Sony's end, then retooling them by way of Namco, creating an arcade platform from the beefed up silicon, which inevitably then became a home console game on Sony hardware. It was a beautiful cycle that gave us some of the best arcade racing (to say nothing of fighting) games on the market. The synergy was beautiful, and though we speak of the partnership in past-tense, it's still very much alive and well.
It's just not in effect here. See, as Namco's core franchises have gotten on in years, it was starting to become clear that some of those simple arcade formulas needed little injection of something new. In the case of the latest Ace Combat game, that was handled by the internal Project Aces team (with a little outside consultation for the story), but with the newest Ridge Racer, Namco has gone external, tapping the considerable talents of Finnish developer Bugbear (of FlatOut fame) to build something that, like Assault Horizon, feels like it got a healthy injection of Burnout.
This is something many Japanese publishers are attempting; a kind of olive branch extended to Western audiences in an effort to make the games more globally palatable. Forgetting for a moment the fact that the games' inherent Japanese-ness was part of the appeal, there's at least a breath-of-fresh-air factor to be considered. And no, for all you purists out there, this isn't getting a mainline numerical title (a concept tested with the ill-received R: Racing Evolution), so you can at least rest easy knowing your "true" Ridge Racer series hasn't been tainted.
Namco described the underlying concept of the game early last year as a sort of peek into what long-time series mascot Reiko gets up to when she's not playing eye candy at the starting line of all those normal Ridge Racer courses (or, uh, breaking her heel -- you still have one of the greatest intros ever R4). Apparently she favors slamming through walls and other opponents alike in rides of questionable handling.
Though there were some unfortunate technical difficulties that forced us to play solo offline instead of online head-to-head with other members of the gaming press, Unbounded does indeed offer online races, and better, will let players create their own maps to share with others. Here's hoping we'll get a chance to take a peek at that before the game hits, but given that this was the first time we'd gotten hands-on time with the game at all, we were more than content to see how it all felt in single-player.
We sat down with one section of Shatter Bay, the game's city-wide set of race courses in the hopes of joining The Unbounded, a gang of street racers led by one Kara Shindo vying for control of the city, cops and other racers be damned. By notching big wins and earning stars, you'll earn respect that serves as both a way to level up, unlocking new vehicles and customization options, plus unlocks new sections of the city with their own race types and setting-based courses. The part of the city we explored was heavily industrial, teeming with smoke stacks and fairly run-down streets, though a cursory glance at other parts of the city seemed to indicate there'll be far more variety, including plenty of those gleaming skyscrapers and freeways to tear ass around.
