Pretty much every console launch has been plagued with bad games, save for Mario 64 and PSP’s Wipeout Pure.

When the PSP was released Wipeout Pure gave us an insight of what the PSP was capable of, not only graphically but also the game play was rock solid.n

So you might imagine how hard it was to wait for Wipeout Pulse, the second Wipeout on the PSP. The game is released on December 14th but i got my hands in a copy that i pre-ordered from Europe.

This iteration in the series rather than revolutionize, evolves the Wipeout formula, this time though, all the features that were missing from previous versions are included, and they are very well executed. Also the amount of content will keep you busy for a long time.
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/n You have the option to play online(Infrastructure) against players around the world, the setup is painless and works very good must of the time, provided you have a Wireless Access Point and a Playstation network account. Thankfully if you have a PSN account from the PS3 it will work here, its nice to see that Sony is finally consolidating its online presence. I played around 10 matches online, they all played fine except for one game that randomly dropped me off the game for no reason at all. All games played fine with no lag, only thing is that there weren’t really a lot of servers available but that is because the game has not been released in America, im sure there are going to be lots of games available once its released.

/n Another nice option is the custom soundtrack, just create a folder named ‘Wipeout’ in your Music folder and you can listen to your own tunes while playing, although the game already comes with great soundtrack, it is a nice feature to have. The music in the game includes the likes of Aphex Twin, Mason and Ed Rush to name a few. The style dwells into trance and DnB, it really gets your heart pumping…

The graphics have been greatly improved from Pure, all the stages look excellent and there are tons of little details that bring the tracks to life, there are neon lights walking through the track, objects flying from afar, sparks, smoke, it really pushes the PSP to its limits while maintaining fast frames per second, of course this gets affected when there is a lot of action, namely when you are being attacked from multiple enemies at once, but it never gets unplayable.

Zone is back and this time you can play every track in Zone mode, for the new comers zone its a play mode where you start in the lowest speed class and you keep advancing speed classes as you clear zones defined in the track, this mode really tests your ability to drive the hovercraft as well as your familiarity with the tracks, you only get 1 life bar and you never get shields. Now all the ships in the game have a Zone version that matches the artistic style of the zone tracks.n

Also the game comes preloaded with a web browser that lets you visit the Wipeout website, just as with Pure there will be downloadable content. This time around though, there are also wallpapers for your PSP. Another excellent feature in their website is the ability to customize your ship, it doesn’t offer a lot of options i wish it had but if you are patient you can achieve a lot with the brushes.

/n SCEU also set up the website to rank users, so you can see who are the best Wipeout players.

Wipeout Pulse is a great package that i recommend to anyone remotely interested in racing games, the single player options will keep you busy for a long time when you don’t have a WiFi connection. With WiFi i see myself playing this game for years to come./n