| Ridge Racer 6 review |
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The Ridge Racer series has been defined by its speed obsessed, physics-bending drifts soaked in the sweaty musk of adrenaline ever since the original System 22 machine slid into arcades back in 1993. Throughout its meandering sequels and deviations, the core drifting mechanics have remained the constant hook around which the rest of the game is built, constructed by ever-improving hardware. Ridge Racer VI is a peculiar beast then; a transmutation of the PSP’s Ridge Racers, Japan’s principle title for Microsoft’s newest console provoked disappointment and disbelief upon announcement, the contention of being a conversion from vastly inferior portable hardware construed as a signal of laziness and complacency. Namco has, though, pummelled and prodded the game into a shape befitting both the franchise’s history and the 360’s considerable assets.
Visually, RR6 just about succeeds in concealing its underpowered heritage, proffering a smooth, hi-def hyperbolic skew on the world that’s occasionally blighted by blurry, low quality textures. The fifteen tracks (doubled including mirrored versions) are largely pastiches from other titles in the series, but represent a diverse selection of scenery, curves and lines.
With the weight of expectation laden upon the Ridge Racer name, the player will automatically presume the Ridge formula of style, speed and curves to be in full effect - a principle that is regrettably not instantly gratified here. The bulk of the game is spent in Xploration mode, ostensibly a vast matrix of races segmented by car class sequentially selected to string together a makeshift championship, rising in difficulty and speed as progression is made. Each race is a battle amongst thirteen competitors from starting last to winning an initially distant first place, with occasional variations on the mode later on. On these early stages though, what should be a hard earned and tightly fought race degenerates into farce, as whichever car you pick is inherently speedier than your opponents. In the lower two classes of car even this speed is relative; so tame that it minimises the thrill of racing, and the incumbent loss of pace makes only marginal drifts worthwhile for the most angular of corners. First place will almost certainly have been secured by the time the first of the three laps is over. Like playing Snap with a generously accommodating elderly Gran, it’s not long before you tire of hearing ‘You Win’. Again.
Fortunately, some time after the wearisome dullness has you indolently placated in your seat and mindlessly blitzing through the championships, the challenge slowly begins to rise. Advancing through classes leads to faster cars which yield more focused and exciting driving, yet races that are still effortlessly mediocre. Only once you discover that the initial route is not the bearer of the entire game (and at a daunting 111 races, you could be forgiven for thinking it was) do you begin to chip away at the hidden depths, unlocking progressively more difficult routes. Now you realise the original route was actually a massively prolonged tutorial mode to learn every nuance of these tracks in preparation for the tougher challenge. A switch in the opponents’ AI is suddenly flicked into the ‘ON’ position; faster cars, aggressive driving and their ability to harvest a seemingly limitless supply of nitros mean you are forever jostling for position.
Besides pitch perfect driving and pre-emptive blocking, nitros are your best ally to survive this hardened onslaught. Appropriated from its PSP brethren, high speed drifting remains the source for boosting the three-tier nitro gauge, now slightly tweaked to incorporate linking nitros together. At the tail end of a boost, whilst still travelling at huge speeds, slamming the car into a drift will cause the nitro bar to almost instantaneously fill. If you’re good, repeat ad infinitum. Obviously, this has greater effect round a significant bend, but it’s still possible to pull off on more lenient turns or even just wide straights, and shifts the focus even further onto better, more prolific drifting in order to garner more nitros. Apparently, this is an attribute that CPU cars are not necessarily obligated to follow, earning far more boosts than they deserve to stimulate a more competitive race. You’re forced to develop new strategies to counter their behaviour, using all three nitro bars at once for faster, longer stints - becoming constantly wary of a car coming screeching up behind, doubly so as a collision will deaden their speed and provide a slight boost to your own.
Constantly linking the boosts throughout an entire track has prompted accusations of ‘snaking’ online, an apparently morally deficient tactic that betrays the ‘videogames as entertainment’ prospectus for the cutthroat idol of victory on a global stage. Unlike the similar resentment generated in the Mario Kart DS community though, where RSI is practically a stipulation of snaking proficiency, the degree of control offered by the analogue triggers means your car always responds fairly and consistently, accessible to anyone prepared to put the time into perfecting it. Even if you are getting your ass handed to you by an obnoxious American kid called Cockmandu. Again.
Online play does not have the omniscient presence of PGR3, containing it all within a separate mode that entails global time trials and ranked races, with up to fourteen players. So long as everyone’s sitting on a decent connection it’s a worthy addition for the series that works well, and provides another facet to the gameplay. In addition, downloadable content in the form of cars and (priced) music tracks from series’ history are currently available on the marketplace. These are mere concessions to the Xbox Live service; the sheer wealth of cars and relative similarity of design mean that until you get to the outlandishly conceived Specials, they’re just another badge of honour on your 360 Gamerscore, whilst the euro-pop disco tracks are likely to do little but offer more congratulations to customisable soundtracks. An unfortunate bug means that online play is reduced to an erratic stuttering when an XP/MCE machine is connected to the 360. Currently, the only solution for this is to disconnect any such machines from within the dashboard; annoying for those using this method for music as it forces you either into musical silence or resorting to the game's default tunes, and later necessitates the laborious process of reconnecting the computers once done playing. Even with Namco's online presence in the marketplace, there are no signs that this will ever be fixed.
Despite the vast amount of content available to complete within the game proper, it all essentially amounts to re-racing the same tracks over and over again, although the one-on-one duel series and demanding no-nitro races go some way to assuage the lack of variation. It’s perhaps surprising then that (excluding the first route) the game so rarely feels like a grind.
For most, just brandishing the Ridge Racer name and (eventually) representing its ideals is enough to warrant a purchase. RR6’s chief failure is its inability to correctly gauge its audience. For a long time, it’s too slow and too easy for all but the most unseasoned of novices; once it shifts up a gear and becomes dramatically faster and more difficult, it grows into the Ridge of lore, the one you know and love and you finally start to race, not just drive. Crucially, no matter how annoyingly hard it gets, and even when you can scientifically prove that the AI is cheating, it still feels beatable if only you had nailed that one corner at just the right angle or saved a nitro for the final stretch. RR6 is perhaps best thought of as a succulent appetiser, foretelling of the potential of what a full blown next-gen Ridge Racer game could be like if Namco truly set their minds to it. And for now, this is enough. Just.
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System: Microsoft Xbox 360
Genre: Racing
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Players: 1-14
Version: United States
Reviewed: Mar 2006
Writer: Simon Ward
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Pros:
- Lovely physics bending drifting
- Absolutely oodles of races
- Online play
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Cons:
- Takes a while to hit its stride
- Too few tracks
- Morally dubious AI
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Ridge Racer 6 Video: 5.6MB
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