The future in the plam of your hand.
For months after the PSP’s launch, the mere mention of "Ridge Racer" implied denotations of "Best. Launch. Game. Ever."-Titles. Better yet, it was a whole lot better than what the DS had seen in the abysmally bad Ridge Racer DS, which turned out to be a dumbed down port of the N64 title.
Again, for the PSP's US launch Ridge Racers shines brightly among the PSP’s many other stars. This racer does have serious competition from Wipeout Pure, taking a fall and slipping to number 2, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.
After the disaster that was Ridge Racer V on the PS2, Namco has really made an amazing recovery. Ridge Racer is a PSP must!
Graphics: 9/10
RR is beautiful. Everything in this game screams PS2-quality, from the superb car models to the amazing glare effects of the rising sun. Even the pavement feels like it was ripped out of GT4.
The resolution is equally stunning, glamorously displayed on the PSP's 4.3in. LCD screen. The car models, while high quality, suffer from some much need AA (something that Wipeout Pure seems to have plenty of) and the design on some of the cars is rather shoddy (the 3rd first class car for example has some very badly malformed lights). There's also an odd lack of any weather effects.
Despite the myriad of special effects on screen, such as smoke or sparks coming off cars going at 180MPH, the frame rate stays at a constant high never fluctuating from it's perfect 60FPS.
The interface too is very slick, along with the stupendous CG opening movie and the background animations in some of the stages.
As for the environments, they too are amazing. You haven't lived until you've seen a sprawling urban metropolis in pseudo-PS2 graphics sprawling in front of your eyes on a screen the size of a slice of bread.
All of these effects masterfully combined make Ridge Racer one of the best looking PSP games on the market, second only to Wipeout.
Sound: 9/10
The best thing about Ridge Racer sound is the soundtrack.
Ridge Racer games have been usually know for their superb, upbeat and high octane techno soundtracks, and this latest outing doesn’t disappoint. With a multitude of tracks so great that you will never feel their looping, Ridge Racer hits the ball way of out the park in the music department.
Listening to these beautiful tracks is painless, as this is no GBA. No sir, this crystal clear quality audio MARVEL makes it a JOY to listen to these tracks. It's virtually impossible to differentiate between the quality of these tracks and the quality of the tracks in Ridge Racer V. As you would expect, you can also adjust sound effects, music and voice volumes individually.
What about the sound effects, you say? They too are pretty good, but they could use some improvement. The screeching of tires is nice but it sounds the same when going into a turn with 180MPH as when going with 80MPH. A difference in engine noise is unheard of and the announcer can get very annoying, as he seems to make it his DUTY to remind you EVERY SINGLE TIME that you hit a car or a tree. After pouring about 4 hours into this game, it can become very annoying.
Gameplay: 8/10
Ridge Racer might be the single most canned racer ever. If you didn't like the brand of racing RR games had in store before, you won't like it now. There is virtually NO difference in the game mechanics between this game and it's great grandfather back in 1993.
That's not to say that morons and fanboys who see the words "Ridge" and "Racer" and call the game a "remake" are right. They're dead wrong. Ridge Racer is far from a remake. Yes, it's a sequel with little new to offer, but why fix what's not broken?
Let's not go on tangents though.
Your mission in Ridge Racer is to qualify for one of 4 possible positions in each racer: 4th, 3rd, 2nd, or 1st place. However, the catch here is that you ALWAYS have to catch up to the 1st place, as you ALWAYS start last. In order to keep things interesting, 11 other cars are sprinkled all over the course. As you keep going you pass each car and keep doing so until you reach the car in the lead. The ultimate staple of this game is the huge drifts you can undertake. Simply taking your foot off the gas and steering the car in one direction or another will send it into an amazing drift that has minimal effect on your speed.
Ridge Racer changes nothing about the driving model I just described, it only adds a catch: Nitrous. Now as you drift around corners you can fill up one of 3 nitrous tanks. The faster you drift, the faster the nitrous fills. When activated, the nitrous gives you a speed AND control boost. No, this game really isn't all that realistic.
Being an arcade racer, RR does a wonderful job of giving you an amazing feel of speed. Speed blur, drifting sideways at hundreds of miles per hour and passing opponents by WHILE IN A DRIFT just make this game so amazingly cool to both watch and play.
All of this is for naught if you don't have WHERE to race. Luckily however, Ridge Racer provides players with both a huge variety of tracks and a ton of opportunities for you speed along on them. There are of course Single Races and Time Attacks, but you'll probably end up spending most of your time in the World Tours section. Here you can unlock new courses, cars, more tours and even create your own tour. If you really are all that you can even unlock extra prizes or ultra special cars by completing different challenges.
Of course, there's a good amount of cars for you to race with in Ridge Racer. 24 cars in all, a good deal of which you can unlock by simply completing the World Tours. The problem with the vehicles is that most of them are derivations of each other. Of the 20 cars I unlocked, 9 are derivations except they have different colors and handle better or have a greater top speed. Worse yet, even among the original models the difference is minimal. The thing that makes each car different is simply how well they drift. Otherwise, speed differences are minimal or non-existent.
As you could probably guess, car handling in this game is very arcade like. The better vehicles are also harder to handle. Choosing a car with a lower speed will, 90% of the time allow for better control. The actual PSP controls however, are extremely responsive and tight. In fact, along with Lumines, this game has the slickest controls among any of the 24 launch titles. The analog is extremely responsive, a mere push towards left or right will register the move, and the acceleration/brake systems work perfectly. R1, used for nitrous, also works wonderfully.
The tracks in Ridge Racer are all pretty to look at but they too can get very derivative. The thing is that most of these tracks are reverse or cut-off versions of about 5 master tracks. However, that's not to say the tracks aren't well made. With a few exceptions, these tracks have a great combination of long straight-aways to gather speed and tight corners to draft through. Almost each straight has a nice corner for you to draft through, which is totally amazing.
Ridge Racer isn't all that difficult. The other cars pretty much just stand there, ala GT4, trudging along the path as you "mow them down". Most of the time, the only reason why you'll lose is because you either hit a car or hit one too many corners. Even so, the game is very forgiving. In 80% of races I had already won 1st place or was 2nd by the time the first (out of 3) laps was completed.
The only time the AI does put up a fight is when you're racing for the 1st-4th spot. At such times the AI can, and will, use nitrous and they do become pretty aggressive and just overall much better drivers.
Load times in Ridge Racer aren't exactly criminal, but they're not midget short either. The only major concern with the load times is that they eat even more of your precious battery: At the moment, Ridge Racer is the fastest PSP battery killer out on the market. I usually get around 4 hours with it, but the louder the volume and the higher the brightness, the lower the battery life.
Multiplayer: 8/10
Ridge Racer's multiplayer is pretty basic, but it does what it does really well.
The two greatest things about multiplayer are the amount of players (an whopping 8 players in Ad Hoc/Infrastructure modes) and the human component. Fighting against a human is a totally different experience, quickly changing the "Gotta catch'em all" mentality of the single player races. The racing that follows the dissolvent of that mentality is among the best ever witnessed on any platform, ever.
Overall: 9/10
Sony and Namco are now 3 for 3. For every single entry in the PlayStation family, there is a Ridge Racer game.
Ridge Racer for the PSP not only makes the cut, but it actually beats all other Ridge Racer games to the punch, making itself the best entry in the venerable series' history.