While I was in town today I picked up Wipeout Fusion, which I didn’t realise was out yet - it was slated for October 2001 originally, then December, then March, so in a perverse way, it’s early. My guess is that it was nowhere near finished in October, since the copy I got today still apparently has some fairly serious bugs. It’s not often you see a console game crash twice in the first 10 minutes of play. The wierd thing is that the crashes were both in the UI, rather than the game. The opening FMV locks up halfway through, and if you have a saved game then choosing to load it at startup, rather than going into the Options menu also seems to leave you with a perpetual black screen. Feh.

Once you get to the game itself though, things look up considerably. All the old-school Wipeout action is here, pretty much. The field has expanded to 16, and weapons are more plentiful, making it a real argy-bargy of a race. The option to burn shields as boost (from Wipeout 2097 and Wip3out) is gone, but to be honest, you’re going to need the shields. The tracks are as nicely designed as ever, except for one gratuitously confusing part early in the first track. They seem to be going the way of Ridge Racer V, in having multiple circuits around the same location with bits barricaded off depending on the course you run. The first courses to be unlocked are reverse versions of the three initial courses (there are at least 6 locations) - very RR-like. Music is still top-notch with contributions from the likes of BT and Orbital, and even includes a remix of Stakker Humanoid! bleep bleep peow!

What it doesn’t have so far is the raw speed of wip3out, although like that game it may well pour it on later. It certainly feels like there is the potential for it. If you want visceral speed straight off the bat, then Burnout may be for you, or SSX (I seem to have a reasonable collection of fast PS2 race titles).