After three years experiencing the best the next generation has to offer, it is becoming more and more uncommon that a game is able to wow me on its audiovisuals alone, let alone reveal a new level of depth in the process. Within minutes of sitting down to play through WipEout HD, I found myself locked in a trance, my heart racing profusely and cold sweat dripping down my brow. WipEout HD has left me blown away and wanting more . Pretty good for a budget-priced download.

The first home console release for the series since 2002’s often forgotten WipEout Fusion, WipEout HD has hit the PlayStation Store, bringing a collective ‘best of’ experience to the PS3 in full high def glory. Combining the best elements of the recent WipEout titles from Sony’s handheld, WipEout HD is a compilation of the tracks, teams and race modes found in the PSP releases Pure and Pulse.

The reigning king of anti-gravity racing, WipEout is a game of speed and fluidity. The aim is to perfect the use of the airbrake and find the smoothest route through the course. The usual race modes return in WipEout HD with the likes of single races, tournaments, speed laps and time trials, as you try to perfect your lap time and cross the line as fast as possible. Each is as addictive and challenging as ever, but Zone is really the star of the show; simply an amazing experience to behold. Devilishly tricky and exceptionally gorgeous, the game’s purchase price is justified by this one mode alone. Zone puts in the drivers seat of ship with the brakes cut and the accelerator jammed. Continually increasing in speed, the aim is to navigate the unstoppable vessel around the courses, with only your airbrakes to aide you, for as long as you possibly can until the craft is destroyed.


First introduced all the way back in WipEout Fusion, Zone is by no means a new addition to the series, but experiencing that same sensation at 60 frames per second in full 1080p, accompanied by amazing visual effects and full 5.1 Surround Sound, is something truly magical. A treat for the eyes, WipEout HD retains the stylised minimalist look of the PSP instalments and expands it one step further, infusing this sterile environment with the rhythm of the beat. The world around you comes to life with the track responding to the music. Equalizers litter the course, embedded in the track beneath you, pulsating as you fly over them at breakneck speeds. Levelling up through the course of the race, waves of colour wash over the track, altering its appearance, until you hit the level of Zen, when the world becomes devoid of colour, represented only in black and white. With the speed of your craft progressively increasing to uncontrollable levels and the track around you responding to the beat, you fall into almost a trance-like state. It’s a sensory overload to rival Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s synesthesia inducing masterpiece Rez and begs to be experienced. It’s no wonder they make you agree to the health and epilepsy disclaimer before you start playing.

WipEout HD brings together six tracks from Pure and two from Pulse, each re-imagined and re-skinned for their latest showing. The track choice is solid with some of the best tracks from the respective titles, but a total of only eight tracks (16 in total with mirror renditions of each track) the number of tracks seems diminutive at first. As you work your way through the campaign mode’s different events, eight in total, you’ll find yourself competing on the same tracks again, instilling a sense of familiarity. Sure more tracks are always welcome, but WipEout is a title that begs to be learned and perfected. As the level of speed increases through your progression, it becomes essential to learn the apex of every corner.

In addition to a comprehensive single player campaign, WipEout offers solid multiplayer support, both online and local. Playing the game in splitscreen, the framerate and graphical quality takes a drastic hit, but online fares a whole lot better, allowing up to eight players to compete in anything from a single race to a 12-stage tournament. You can further customise your experience, altering the speed class from the noob-friendly Venom right up to the blistering Phantom class. Online play is smooth, fast and seamless, what more can you ask?


Making good use of the SIXAXIS controller, motion controls can be used to control your entire craft or to just simply alter the pitch. With the floaty nature of the crafts themselves, WipEout feels like a better fit for motion control than other racers that have tried and failed in the past. It can take some getting used to, but once you have learned the courses and adjusted the sensitivity of the control, steering with the SIXAXIS becomes a fluid and truly viable alternative to the analogue stick, without simply feeling like a novelty.

Almost as important as the gameplay itself, music has always been a significant part of the WipEout series; few of my memories from WipEout 2097 would be the same without Firestarter pumping through the speakers. A mix of the usual drum and bass, house and electronic music, the soundtrack is both fitting and memorable (presented in full Dolby 5.1 surround sound to boot), but with a total of only nine included music tracks, the soundtrack feels disappointingly small. It barely takes an hour of play before you have the entire tracklist memorised. Like with its PSP predecessors, WipEout HD actively encourages the use of custom soundtracks. A painless and easy alternative, you can’t go wrong with a soundtrack chosen by yourself, but as a trade off you lose the amazing 5.1 surround sound in the process.

The WipEout series has been the shinning example for Sony’s online potential, delivering an absurd amount of downloadable content to prolong the life of the PSP instalments. WipEout HD is no exception. Here you have a downloadable title that is no bigger than a gigabyte and costs under $30. A treat for the eyes and ears, this is the way WipEout was always meant to be played. With only eight tracks included, a few more sure wouldn’t go astray, but if WipEout’s track record is anything to go by, a track pack should hopefully be the pipeline. WipEout HD doesn’t deliver anything new in the form of teams and tracks, but if you skipped the PSP instalments, Pure and Pulse, WipEout HD is a terrific opportunity to return to the series and an even better place to start. Even if you played the handheld titles to death, WipEout HD is still a must buy, if only to experience WipEout as God intended.