The learning curve on the game is pretty short. The first thing you have to learn is how to drift effortlessly around a corner. After half an hour or so of sliding your car directly into crash barriers, swearing quite a lot and pulling some impressive, but ultimately time-consuming, 360 degree spins coming out of corners, you should soon be reasonably competent at drifting round corners at speed. The better you become at drifting the more you build up your nitrous meter, which is split into three levels – fast, too fast and ridiculously fast.
Drifting in RR6, as with all Ridge Racers, involves simply letting off the gas then snapping it back on and reverse-steering. Drifting in real life generally involves stacking your lovingly modded 200SX S13 into a roundabout kerb as one SPOnG staffer found out to his cost last week and therefore is best avoided.
And once you’ve cracked these basic elements of Ridge Racer 6’s gameplay you have little more to learn. Just how to go faster in bigger and better cars. Easy. Except, after some time playing, you realise that there are hidden depths to the gameplay. You need to learn when is best to unleash the three bar nitrous speed assault – ideally before you go into an exquisitely-timed high speed drift around another endless bend, which means you power-up the nitrous bar all over again. Yes, it’s a simplistic arcade driving game, but that’s not to mean its also clever, thoughtfully designed, nicely executed and almost guaranteed to give an enjoyable burst of fun to novices and seasoned drivers alike.
And now for a few gripes. Graphically the game is of course heads and shoulders above every other version of Ridge Racer that’s come before it. This is in no way surprising of course, as its been developed for the most powerful games console yet known to man, and it’s it indeed a joy to witness some of the dazzling lighting and shading effects as you whip round those bends in a haze of nitrous-fuelled abandon. But, it just doesn’t seem to have that ‘OMG! Factor’ we were hoping for when we first booted it up. It’s just like playing a brilliant arcade game on your telly. So in that respect, it’s kind of just like it was ten years ago, back in the old PSX days.
As for the cars – none of which are based on real world models or licensed from real world car manufacturers – there are basically three different types to choose from: mild drift, standard drift and dynamic drift. Mild drift cars are easy but rubbish and a bit slow whilst dynamic drift cars seem to be all over the road in a constant powerslide, but are dead fast and loads more fun. So we usually tend to opt for standard drift models, which seem to strike a driveable balance between speed and slidiness.
Collisions, both into other cars and into the crash barriers can become something of an annoyance after a while. Namco has quite clearly set out its stall and said that the game is all about speed and racing, and as such has designed collisions to be both unrealistic and not really an integral part of gameplay. With games such as the Burnout series proving increasingly popular amongst arcade driving fans – which essentially flip this rule around and make collisions the integral part of the gameplay – one would have expected better crashes and collisions. Though of course, the idea is not to crash…
The final gripe is perhaps the main one – which is that you really need to subscribe to Xbox Live to get the full experience of this game. As a stand-alone single player experience, it is only really going to have a rather limited lifespan. The World Explorer Mode – essentially what used to be called ‘career mode’ – promises single players a seemingly endless array of multiple paths through hundreds of different races, with the added incentive of unlocking new cars the further you progress. However, the tracks and cars too quickly become the same old variation on a limited number of basic models, which meant, at least for SPOnG, that the online and multiplayer options were a more preferable and fulfilling option.
The online multiplayer Xbox Live experience of Ridge Racer 6 really does take the game to a totally new and exciting level – with an array of really well thought out features on offer. Racing up to 13 other friends over the Live network and uploading your best races to a worldwide leader board through the Global Time Attack menu is sheer genius. This more than anything is perhaps the feature which will have die-hard Ridge Racer fans solidly addicted to Ridge Racer 6 for months to come, just trying, just one more time, to shave seconds off that last race time.
SPOnG rating: B
Whilst only offering a limited appeal as a single-player game and not much of a technical triumph, Ridge Racer 6 is a solid, well-designed and well-executed arcade racer. And as a multiplayer online experience it’s hard to beat, setting a new benchmark in quality and graphical perfection in spite of our initial reserve. If you don’t want PGR3 or just need something, you don’t really have a choice. That said, you don’t really need one.
Drifting in RR6, as with all Ridge Racers, involves simply letting off the gas then snapping it back on and reverse-steering. Drifting in real life generally involves stacking your lovingly modded 200SX S13 into a roundabout kerb as one SPOnG staffer found out to his cost last week and therefore is best avoided.
And once you’ve cracked these basic elements of Ridge Racer 6’s gameplay you have little more to learn. Just how to go faster in bigger and better cars. Easy. Except, after some time playing, you realise that there are hidden depths to the gameplay. You need to learn when is best to unleash the three bar nitrous speed assault – ideally before you go into an exquisitely-timed high speed drift around another endless bend, which means you power-up the nitrous bar all over again. Yes, it’s a simplistic arcade driving game, but that’s not to mean its also clever, thoughtfully designed, nicely executed and almost guaranteed to give an enjoyable burst of fun to novices and seasoned drivers alike.
And now for a few gripes. Graphically the game is of course heads and shoulders above every other version of Ridge Racer that’s come before it. This is in no way surprising of course, as its been developed for the most powerful games console yet known to man, and it’s it indeed a joy to witness some of the dazzling lighting and shading effects as you whip round those bends in a haze of nitrous-fuelled abandon. But, it just doesn’t seem to have that ‘OMG! Factor’ we were hoping for when we first booted it up. It’s just like playing a brilliant arcade game on your telly. So in that respect, it’s kind of just like it was ten years ago, back in the old PSX days.
As for the cars – none of which are based on real world models or licensed from real world car manufacturers – there are basically three different types to choose from: mild drift, standard drift and dynamic drift. Mild drift cars are easy but rubbish and a bit slow whilst dynamic drift cars seem to be all over the road in a constant powerslide, but are dead fast and loads more fun. So we usually tend to opt for standard drift models, which seem to strike a driveable balance between speed and slidiness.
Collisions, both into other cars and into the crash barriers can become something of an annoyance after a while. Namco has quite clearly set out its stall and said that the game is all about speed and racing, and as such has designed collisions to be both unrealistic and not really an integral part of gameplay. With games such as the Burnout series proving increasingly popular amongst arcade driving fans – which essentially flip this rule around and make collisions the integral part of the gameplay – one would have expected better crashes and collisions. Though of course, the idea is not to crash…
The final gripe is perhaps the main one – which is that you really need to subscribe to Xbox Live to get the full experience of this game. As a stand-alone single player experience, it is only really going to have a rather limited lifespan. The World Explorer Mode – essentially what used to be called ‘career mode’ – promises single players a seemingly endless array of multiple paths through hundreds of different races, with the added incentive of unlocking new cars the further you progress. However, the tracks and cars too quickly become the same old variation on a limited number of basic models, which meant, at least for SPOnG, that the online and multiplayer options were a more preferable and fulfilling option.
The online multiplayer Xbox Live experience of Ridge Racer 6 really does take the game to a totally new and exciting level – with an array of really well thought out features on offer. Racing up to 13 other friends over the Live network and uploading your best races to a worldwide leader board through the Global Time Attack menu is sheer genius. This more than anything is perhaps the feature which will have die-hard Ridge Racer fans solidly addicted to Ridge Racer 6 for months to come, just trying, just one more time, to shave seconds off that last race time.
SPOnG rating: B
Whilst only offering a limited appeal as a single-player game and not much of a technical triumph, Ridge Racer 6 is a solid, well-designed and well-executed arcade racer. And as a multiplayer online experience it’s hard to beat, setting a new benchmark in quality and graphical perfection in spite of our initial reserve. If you don’t want PGR3 or just need something, you don’t really have a choice. That said, you don’t really need one.