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It seems that Super Mario 64 has broken tradition of necessary launch titles that seemed to be set in stone with the release of the 32-bit systems. A year ago, it was almost inconceivable to purchase a PlayStation or a Saturn without two necessary games: a fighting game and a racing game. A year later, swimming around in this flood of PlayStation sequels (more like a flood of sewage if you ask me), I came across Ridge Racer Revolution and decided it was worth a shot since I was completely addicted to Ridge Racer from day one. I asked myself what made this otherwise generic title stand out in a plethora of racing games and I came up with two distinctive features: Great control, and amazing AI. When I stop and think of it, the two aforementioned features are seemingly all that are exclusive to this game when compared to the competition. The graphics and sounds in Ridge Racer were nice, but were outdone several times by games that lacked the key playability that Ridge Racer was full of. I'm sure no one liked the game because it was particularly long, because many 8- and 16- bit racing games have many times the number of tracks contained in Ridge Racer. Now it's time for me to step away from this review and complain about how this little plastic CD isn't used. A CD has almost 700 MB of data, you think they could put more than four megs in a damn racing game? No... Here's short (but awesome) Ridge Racer with most of the CD dedicated to music. Hell, since the game hardly takes up any space, why not just throw it on a Nintendo 64 cart? At least it would look better then! ...OK, I think I vented enough about how companies aren't utilizing their space efficiently, let's get back to the review, shall we? In all, I feel it must have been the great control and those frustrating cars that like to pass you on the straightaways that makes RR so addictive. Ridge Racer Revolution seems to be one of those (many) PlayStation sequels that is just more of what the original was. Again, this does not necessarily make it a bad game, but the lack of innovation makes it almost worthless unless you do not have the original already. Indeed, just by watching the game, many similarities between RRR and RR (now these acronyms are getting out of hand, okay?) are noticeable, and it is difficult for the casual player to distinguish one Ridge Racer from the other. How similar are they? Let's go down the list: Four cars selectable at first? Check. Three immediately selectable tracks? Check. Galaga? Check. Good graphics, good music, cheesy sound effects...check, check, check...I think you get the point. So, what are the differences? Well, the graphics are different, though not necessarily better or clearer. The graphics are textured polygons (like you were expecting anything else, right?) that make up buildings, tunnels, trees, houses, cars...ya' know, the stuff. The graphics are nice, but nothing you haven't seen done better elsewhere. The music is, once again, an excellent mix of techno songs that are either remixed (a feature I found quite charming) or brand new. The sound effects, especially the announcer, have got to go. Other innovations include a slew of cars and the brand new, handy-dandy rearview mirror! In all, this is one of those simple games that just keeps you coming back for more. Should you get it? Only if you either didn't get Ridge Racer last year or really, really love the game. Besides that, there's nothing new here for you, but what's there is certainly fun. |
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