There is no question of the almost immediate positive response this game got when it was first debuted for the Sony Playstation. Psygnosis, now known as Sony/Psygnosis, have repeated the performance with an excellent PC port. Racing games are a genre that has only a couple basic styles -- race for speed, or race for speed with weapons. Wipeout fits into the second catagory. Your spacecraft flies extremely smooth on a true 3D course, where taking the right line through the course is absolutly essential. The handling is nothing short of remarkable. The PC version, with an analog joystick, has handling that far exceeds that of the Playstation. The sound is incredible, and the graphics excellent. Even nicer is that this game runs entirely off of your CD-Rom, requiring no Hard-Drive space. It ran with no modification needed under OS/2, Dos, and Windows 95. And if all this isn't enough, Wipeout supports network play for up to 8-players!
This game is the true mark of compatibility. Although it is much prettier on a machine with a fast video card, it has modes that will let it run on most everything. The various modes allow you to control pop-up (how far out the terrain is built), texture mapping levels, and detail. The pop-up setting seemed to be enough of a speed gain for all of our systems. On our P90, with a PCI video card the game could be set to 100% detail, and there was absolutly no visible terrain build. Another key benefit of this title is its operating system friendliness. We ran it, without having to change any setup, under OS/2, Dos, and Windows 95. Under Windows 95 the game auto-runs in Dos mode. No hard disk space? No problem. The game runs entirely off of your CD-Rom.
This is one of the freshest, best racing games that I've played. Although the gameplay takes a while to master, the depth of play is excellent. Compatibility is not a problem, and the network play is a welcome feature. This game comes from the Ferrari Man as highly recommended.
Graphics : 20/25
Smooth graphics, and a nice course design bump this score up. A low 320 pixel resolution maximum keeps it down. Future Psygnosis games will have 3D accelerator support, and promise higher resolutions.
Gameplay : 24/25
The first time I picked the game up I had a hard time controlling the ship... But after just a few short games, the depth of gameplay really began to shine. The feel of this racer is right on the money.
Longetivity : 22/25
The one player racing portion of this game is excellent. But the ability to network with your friends, really make this a game to keep coming back to.
Compatibility : 24/25
The game ran under every single combination we threw at it. The only thing keeping the game from a perfect score is its slightly higher requirements to run in full detail mode.
Graphics : 20/25