Wipeout HD

Often in MMORPGs, in-game characters reflect the personality of their players. After playing as an Undead Rogue for a total of 14 days and 9 hours, I’ve found that sometimes the reverse is also true. Because of what some might call a “WoW addiction,” my life outside of gaming has taken on many roguish aspects, much to my pleasure and benefit. So today let me teach you the arts of stealth, trickery, and deception, and how they can help you to get what you want in the real world.


Set it on Stun
One of the dirtiest moves in a Rogue’s arsenal is the stun. Stuns are good for a variety of uses in the outside world. For instance, a quick cheap-shot or sap to your local game store clerk provides an excellent opportunity for an expensive game to become free. And as a Rogue I don’t like to pay for anything, just on principle.

Also, if someone is bullying you, give ‘em a taste of the ol’ kidney shot, just to show them who’s the boss. Perhaps while they’re stunned you could pants them for good measure, too. Another good strategy that I like to employ is the use of my stunning good looks and roguish charm. While this isn’t as easy to do in-game as an Undead Rogue, it certainly works on the ladies in real life.


Keepin' it on the Sly
But when it comes to stuns, where would we be without stealth? Oh stealth, the twinkle in the rogue’s eye, the reason for everyone’s jealous cries of “nerf!” Seriously, stealth is great. For instance, thanks to stealth, I don’t even have to pay for movies anymore. Not that I ever did in the first place, but that’s a whole different story.

Stealth is the best because you can go anywhere and do anything you want without anybody else being able to see you. Now I don’t expect you to be crazy or star in a bad movie like Kevin Bacon in Hollow Man, but I still suggest you use it to your benefit. Just imagine what would’ve happened in Porky’s if those kids had been stealthy Rogues. Oh yeah, you know what I am talking about. In a more socially acceptable use, if there’s someone you don’t like, you could always put a tack on their chair without them ever noticing. Actually, I like the Porky’s idea better.


Gettin' Sticky Fingers
Did I mention that as a Rogue, I don’t like to pay for anything? Well it’s still true, but sometimes a Rogue must spend some money on things like repairs, food, and women. This is where pick-pocketing comes in handy. The best part is that alongside sweet, sweet gold, I often end up stealing other knickknacks like intricate baubles, and flasks of demon rum. While I don’t have much use for intricate baubles, elderly relatives seem to love them. Heck, some of them also enjoy the flasks of demon rum as well, but I usually like to keep those for myself.

So I hope that you’ve learned a few ways that you can use your in-game Rogue skills to do what you want in real life. Perhaps soon you will be as rich and surrounded by as many beautiful women as I am. Unless you’re a Warlock or something, in which case I have no advice for you.

Like its predecessors, Wipeout HD has an incredibly steep difficulty curve. It's relatively easy to win medals on the first go during the first four tiers, but even seasoned players will struggle to do this from the fifth tier onward. Recognising this, Sony has implemented a new pilot assist mode for the first time in a Wipeout game. When it's turned on from the menu, pilot assist automatically steers you away from the edges of the track and generally makes crashing much less of a problem. In fact, it's so effective that you only really need to use your airbrakes for the sharpest corners. While this produces some erratic moves at the faster speeds, it's a welcome feature that certainly helps until you reach the peak of your ability.

Wipeout HD has both a two-player split-screen mode and eight-player online support. The split-screen mode runs at a noticeably lower frame rate than the single-player mode, and it suffers from some dramatic slowdown when a lot of ships are onscreen. The online mode fares much better in terms of performance, with a well-laid-out lobby system and smooth online racing. Real opponents create much more frantic races, and you get far more action online than you do playing against the AI; you'll find your ship taking much more of a pounding online than off, but when your ship explodes you return to the track a few moments later. The main problem with the multiplayer mode is that it's incredibly limited, with only single races or twelve-race competitions to play. Other than that, the online mode held up well from a technical level, and it also offers voice support.

There are a number of PlayStation 3-specific features in Wipeout HD, including a motion-based control system. You move the controller to control pitch and steering, or just pitch alone. Wipeout's floaty ships might seem like a perfect candidate for motion-sensitive controls, but it's unlikely that you'll find tilting the Sixaxis controller preferable to using the standard analog stick. It certainly helps land jumps a little more elegantly, but it just doesn't offer the accuracy of movement offered by the standard control scheme. Wipeout HD also has trophy support which gives you an incentive to try out moves such as barrel rolls, and there are unlockables such as the heads-up display from PlayStation classic Wipeout 2097 (known as Wipeout XL in the US). You also get new skins for the ships you use the most, but the feature in Wipeout Pulse where you can design your own decals online hasn't made it to the PS3. The photo mode has been expanded in Wipeout HD, though, allowing you to capture stills from replays and add effects such as exposure and depth of field while saving them in full HD resolution to the PS3 XMB. And while the in-game soundtrack is great for fans of electronica, you can also import your own playlists--created through the XMB from music files you've uploaded to your PS3--and play them sequentially or randomly in-game to introduce a little more variation.

Wipeout has always been about "style as substance", and that tradition follows through to the PlayStation 3 version. From the strikingly clean environments to the imaginative logos and branding, everything about the game exudes effortless cool. Much has been made about the game's 1080p, 60-frames-per-second visuals, with Sony even citing it as one of the reasons for the game's prolonged development time. Thankfully it was well worth the effort, as the finished game has strikingly artistic visuals that are gorgeous to see in motion. This isn't a game that features accurate physics, track deformation, or even weather effects, so all of the console's horsepower is focused on producing super-crisp visuals that move at a blistering speed.

Music is just as important to Wipeout as the visuals, though, and the soundtrack doesn't disappoint. The mix of techno, dub step, and drum and bass fits the game well--but that said, Wipeout HD features exactly the same tunes as Wipeout Pulse. Likewise, all of the tracks and vehicles in Wipeout HD have appeared in the PSP versions of the series. Even though the HD remix offers an incredible amount of extra detail to appreciate, the twists and turns will be incredibly familiar to long-term fans of the series. And although there are zone variations of each track, these were also in the previous games, meaning the lack of anything new to play is definitely Wipeout HD's biggest weakness.

Wipeout HD is a compilation of PSP games running in high definition, and while it looks considerably better for the visual upgrade, there's little new for fans of the series to sink their teeth into. The online mode also looks a little feature-light next to other racers, but it's technically competent and adds more longevity to the already deep single-player experience. The result is essentially an oxymoron--a game that's obviously meant for fans, but one that paradoxically gives them nothing they don't already have. If you're a fan of the series but missed the PSP games then HD is a must-buy, but Wipeout stalwarts could rightfully look at this director's cut as a bit of a cash-in.

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