 Ridge Racer V starts off without the usual Namco spectacular C.G Movie, instead we are show a delightful introduction using the PS2 Emotion engine.
Namco has also introduced a new Ridge racer girl, her name is Ai Fukami. She moves across the screen, like nothing I have ever seen on a console game, I was completely amazed. But you have to expect something like this from Namco. But to be honest I think the Ridge racer 4 girl was better looking.
The Front-end, is beautifully designed. Looking close to what the Designers of republic would design. The front end is very easy to navigate, making it easy to get a race started. All the normal options are visible, Nothing amazing.
 The in-game graphics are nothing sort of spectacular, reflections in the building windows that surrounding the racetrack, lights reflect on the car as it screams through the tunnel. The environment reflecting on the car, trees, walls etc, it all look beautiful. While racing on the various tracks the player will notice that there is a lot more traffic on the roads around the racetrack the player is racing on. The other things you will notice are trains and planes this all adds to the feeling that you are racing through a real city.
The racetracks are beautifully made, the surrounding of the tracks are amazing. But I think that the tracks could have been more fun to play. More sharp corners, more twists and thinner roads. Most of the tracks in the game are very wide, and easy to maneuver around, I think that it adds to game play when the track width changes in and out of the corners. But the tracks in R.R V. are very easy to race, and it doesn't take long at all to learn them. This is a good thing though, because the user will soon learn the perfect race line.
I am a big fan of G.T. and I can't see anything no-body making tracks more fun to play than the G.T. team. I know that both games are very different in style, but G.T. has both types of tracks.
The A.I. in the game is terrible, the CPU cars must be drunk or a blind man must be driving them. They just seem bang into to you, they don't seen to find their race line. They constantly dodge in and out, banging into each other and into the player, I find very annoying. I was hoping a lot more with the A.I, but it seems that all the ridge racer series has bad A.I.
 The Sound is ok, but nothing special. I thought that the sound would have been a lot more power, in terms of depth. I wanted loud screeching of the tires, powerful sounding engines, noises from passing traffic, train, airplanes, echo's from the tunnel. But what I got was weak sound, I am sure that the PlayStation could do this.
There are 3 different times that you race, Day, Midday and Nighttime. In the afternoon, you amazingly bright sun, which blinds you at times, this is very cool, and great when you watch the replay. The whole track is cast in a beautiful color, the reflection in the car at midday are wonderful.
Nighttime is my favorite time to race, beautiful effects are displayed, showing the power of PS2. You know as soon as you see the effects, that this could only be done on PS2.
Streetlights are lit up, building look real, car headlights are a blazing. It looks like a C.G movie you are watching, that's how good it looks. But I think that all racing games have night driving wrong. I don't want to see the whole track in the distance, I want feel scared when racing at 160 MPH though cities at night, but so far I haven't found a game that has done this so far. But I guess this an arcade game experience.
There is a 2-player game, but to be honest it looks like it was rushed, the draw distance is terrible, and it's fogged just like a one-player Nintendo 64 game. The detail of the cars had also dropped, I was very disappointed with the 2-player mode.
What was going through my mind was that this was a port from the PS. See for yourself.
But even in one player mode there is evidence of pop up. I thought that pop up would have been a thing of the pasted. I was a designer in the U.K. about 3 years ago, and when I was designing a race game, I would always design the racetrack around the engine of the game. This would mean that there would be no pop-up, because I would know how far I could draw into the distance. This meant putting, turns in the road, walls, mountains, over passers, billboards and anything else to hind the pop-up, but it looks like Namco didn't do it on this one. Maybe they thought that with the power of PS2 they wouldn't need to hide stuff any more. I guess they where wrong.
They have a very annoying Voice in the game, this voice is meant to be a DJ, watching the game, he make comment on your driving plus a bunch of other things like, "a great day for a race." But the voice is played too much, or it says the same things too many times. If you remember F1, on the PlayStation, you'll remember that Murray Walker said the same things over and over again, and it got very annoying to listen too. Well R.R .V is has the same problem. Turn him off, you'll enjoy the game a whole lot more.
Game play, ok, well this is ridge racer we are talking about, so you'll know how is plays. I think that they have slightly change the car dynamics, because controlling the power slides is a lot easier, than the other games. They have also changed the dynamics when the car jumps. For instance, if you jump, while turning, the car will move in the direction you where turning before the car left the ground. So when the car hits the floor after the jump, the car will twitch a little making it a little tricky to control. But nothing that you couldn't get use too though.
The replays are very cool, you can change the camera to 4 different position in replay mode. Also it doesn't something that I have never seen on a console game before, that is focus points. When the camera is focused on the players car, the back ground is out of focus, or when the camera changes to a different position, the camera maybe focused on the wall, and when the cars come into shot the focus changes from the wall to the car. This is very impressive, and something I think that should be used in all games.
The music, isn't what I was expecting, with the last ridge racer games, we had techno style music. But now Namco have gone from different style, like rock type music, ambient music and hardcore music, this mixture I think doesn't suit this game, I always turn the music in the option screen. And turn on my stereo for music.
Even though I have said a few bad things about Ridge Racer, this is the first generation of PS2 software, we have a long way to go, before we see the real potential on hardware.
Ridge Racer is a fun game to play, if you like the other Ridge Racer, I am sure you will love this. Ridge Racer is a must have title, go get it.
In my book Namco is probably the best developer on the planet. I can't wait until they get to grips with PS2. |
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 Reader Reviews
| Score: |
| 8 |
| Gameplay |
| 9 |
| Graphics |
| 9 |
| Sound |
| 6 |
| Value |
| 7 |
| "Ridge Racer is a fun game to play, if you like the other Ridge Racer, I am sure you will love this" |
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