I'll admit I've been having a blast with WipEOut HD: FURY. The new game modes have added just the right amount of fresh air into the mix, and for the trophy whores, at least three of the games trophies are much easier to achieve. The new Piranha has improved stats making the Beat Zico trophy more doable, the eliminator mode makes racking up online take-downs easier, and the new tracks for zone mode have less sharp turns and more straightaways. Even with a new coat of paint, Wipeout is the same solid beast it was a year ago, and expansion aside, WOHD has many features that are underused in many games today.

One thing that always fascinated me about WOHD was the photo mode. If you direct your eyes
^ ^ ^ you'll notice my banner is actually a screen-shot I took while racing around Chengou Project. The photo mode (which can be initiated at any point during single player mode simply by pausing the game and selecting photo) allows much in the way of customization from saturation and contrast to depth of field and blurring effects. Screens can be taken of any of the vehicles' interiors, exteriors, or of the track itself, with the options to blur the vehicle or the track. These pictures save directly to the PS3 hard-drive, so you can use them for wallpapers or user pictures, and since the game displays in HD, the screen-shots do as well.



Another feature the game implements well is the custom soundtrack and soundtrack distortion. Any playlist you have saved on your hard-drive can be imported into the game as a custom soundtrack (which many games allow), and during the game the artist and song title appear scrolling at the top left portion of the HUD when a new song begins playing. During actual gameplay, many things affect the audio output; being hit by a missile/rocket/bomb/mine will distort and soften the music, a similar effect happens when the vehicle is in midair or low on health, and reverb is added to the audio when the vehicle is cruising through a tunnel or enclosed portion of the track. During zone mode, the track and its surroundings also act as a visual equalizer, where lights pulse and pound to the rhythm of the beat. It's impressive to see these things programmed to match the included soundtrack, but to have them all work with your custom soundtrack as well is refreshing.



In the game Noby Noby Boy, there is a feature that allows you to record gameplay videos into a format compatible with YouTube and from the system itself, post them online. This sort of feature has only been seen in a few console games, namely Halo 3 and the upcoming Uncharted 2, which leads me to the question "Why?" If these PSN titles have these features why can't more retail games, especially the big budget titles? WipeOut doesn't just have a screen-shot capturing tool, but a fully featured one with many tweakable settings. Most games don't even include the ability to take a standard screen-shot.



I'm the sort of person who loves mini-games in RPGs (or card games in the case of Triple Triad), Crash Modes in racing games, and a healthy dose of exploration in all my games, so I expect more to mess around with in every game I play. I love Zelda and appreciate the dungeon designs, but I spend most of my time catching poes, fishing, horse racing, target practicing, or doing menial tasks for random NPCs (which is why Majora's Mask is my favorite of the Zeldas so far, and if Wind Waker had several large villages it would be a front runner). I want all FPSes to have the level of customization of Perfect Dark 64, and all racing games to have the sheer amount of content, depth, and variety of modes as Burnout Paradise. I expect these things because the games have already existed to set a precedent for such content. So developers, get on it. Appease me by adding more to my games, and I'll love you forever.

Also, the ulterior motive for this blog is to share this website with fellow WipeOut enthusiasts. I stumbled across it and felt the urge to tell someone who would appreciate it.