While all these are fun, they also seemed very different from previous installments. There’s your standard race, 1 lap sprint, battle mode (which pits racers against each other in a turbo induced dog fight), time trials, and the always loved zones mode. Different races not only have different rule sets like “mines only” or “boosts only”, but they also have a couple modes you can play. 2048’s lengthy on-line and off-line campaigns stuff in a decent amount a variety. You’ll have plenty of reason to switch cars, too. I also found myself growing fonder of certain vehicles and wanting to unlock as many as I could, a feeling that never surfaced with HD’s cumbersome car clustershart. Seeing how I usually just grab one ship and stick with it the whole game, the change of strategy was a welcomed sight. All of the aforementioned cars come in one of the game specific manufacturers like Feisar and Pir-hana, and I found myself constantly picking a specific ship for a specific task. They break the classes down as speed, fighter, agility, and prototype. You’ll also get to chose from a variety of cars which are, for the first time, organized in a user-friendly, understandable way. They also hide the option amongst the confusing menu system that will leave you scratching your head for the first section of the game. It’s odd they didn’t give you the control scheme with air brake mechanics as a default seeing as it’s a must have to succeed.
The handling is spot-on as long as you switch from the default “racer” controls to the familiar “wipeout” controls.
Wipeout 2048 hud styles ps3#
While it doesn’t travel at the ultra-smooth 60fps that its PS3 counterpart does, I rarely found myself complaining about the frame rate or the appearance of speed in general. This is especially damming in later races where the computer is flying through them, leaving you to air-brake into walls at 1000 mph while slowly sinking into last place.Īt its core Wipeout is about going fast, and 2048 has speed in spades. The standard tracks are manageable, if not a little crowded, but the awkward shortcut placement makes it gruesomely hard to swing in and successfully navigate the alternative routes in the already cramped circuits. Throughout your racing you’ll come across plenty of small alleys and alternative routes to cut your time down, the problem is these shortcuts are always about half the original track’s size and hidden against steep turns and sudden forks.
Now, where these new environments do hiccup are in the shortcuts. I especially think 2048’s tracks (which are separated into the first few years of racing) create a better narrative of progress and a much needed sense of diversity. I vastly prefer the detailed city-scapes of 2048 over HD’s hyper-color saturated world. The busier environments do clutter up the screen a bit, but the visual ambiance it creates is a winner.
You’ll often find yourself speeding through the grass of a city park or banking in between two skyscrapers on a levitating highway. The environments are way more urban than the sterile HD tracks players may be used to. Taking place before the first game on the original Playstation, you get to experience what the gentle beginnings of anti-gravity racing was like. The intro sequence takes us through Wipeout’s fictional past.Ģ048 is a prequel to the whole Wipout franchise.