(I'm posting this in 3 parts as it's too long to go in one post).
Make no mistake about it, WipEout Fusion will draw you in, chew you up and spit you out, then throw you down to the ground. It will mercilessly grind you down to the pathetic pulp that you are. Because you're not Good Enough. Are You?
Fusion has recieved many grim reviews, but a far greater number of brilliant ones. But after two and a half solid days of playing it, I can honestly say that the only people who can complain about WipEout Fusion are the people who are crap at it. If you're Good Enough, it's the most rewarding, yet nerve-wracking experience I think you can get on the PS2.
The game is very off-putting for newbies; you start off with only three minging ships, with all their attributes at their minimum level, and you only have the secondary pilots available. Zone Mode, Time Trial, most of the Arcade circuits and all but the first of the Leagues are locked as well. The ships, as I said, start off with poor levels of everything, and you might be tricked into thinking that the rest of the game is as bad as this. Indeed, if I hadn't already been forewarned of this by the people of WipEoutZone, I would probably have been pretty discouraged and would have returned the game, disgruntled, to my shelf along with G-Surfers.
In short, if you want a quick thrill, go for Extreme G-3 or G-Surfers; they offer most of the game at your feet (actually, stay away from G-Surfers; I have it and it's shit). But if you want something that'll pound the hell out of you and make you work your fingers to the gristle trying to reach the cool stuff, Fusion's your weapon of choice.
A lot of the bad reviews were of their opinion because of the occasional slowdown. I'm probably alone in this, but slowdown actually impresses me. If a game is capable of causing slowdown on a machine with as much brute force as the PS2, then it must be a very powerful digital frisbee indeed. And it is only the graphics that slow down; never the sound. This actually gives quite a cool adrenalin-induced slow-motion effect. When it's accompanied by the more ethereal of the music tracks, such as the remix of FSOL's Papua New Guinea, or Switchback, it almost reaches poeticness. And it only happens very occasionally; when there are a lot of ships on the screen all engaging in an orgy of balletic bulletic mayhem.
Speaking of the weapons, I've got very mixed feelings about them. The game used to be about control and racing skill, and the weapons were there just to give you a little helping hand when you needed it. Now, it's ALL about the weapons. You need to be good at steering, but not as good as you used to need to be. It's great fun, and it's had me cackling evilly with delight several times, but it feels very different from the other WipEouts.
And I'm very dubious about some of the new weapons. The Grav Stinger, for example, is a glowing spiky thing that you drop onto the track behind you. When someone drives over it, it takes out their AG unit and they drop onto the track and stop dead (a bit like driving over a police stinger) for half a second. This is Good. You can see it coming and avoid it if you're good enough. And it looks damn funny as well when it happens to another pilot. The Gravity Bomb, on the other hand, does the same thing to all the ships in the vicinity when thrown. Stupid! Too frustrating if it's done to you, and it gives you too much of an advantage when you do it.
The Rockets are one of the weapons that have been there since the beginning of the series. They shoot in salvoes of three, like in 2097, but one after the other, not simultaneously. They cause big damage (thye're far more powerful than they used to be; you have to unlock them by progressing through the 10 Leagues) and are very satisfying. But they're green. GREEN. Since when has any weapon shot Green ammo? They'd have looked so cool if they'd been red, or blue, or purple, but green makes them look wussy.
The Mines are ace, though. They don't look anywhere as good as they appear on the 'Mines unlocked' screen, but they're damn effective. Instead of being shot all the same time (WipEout) or one after the other (2097, Wip3out), they shoot one at a time, so you can press the fire button repeatedly and drop them in a line or a clump for maximum damage, or you can drop them singly in strategic points. I like to drop them on weapon grids and speed chevrons.
Instead of sitting passively on the track, though, they're magnetic, and pull the ships towards them. Easier to avoid if you're a big heavy ship like an EG-R, but very hard if you're a Van-Uber. After hitting them, they throw you sideways into the wall, rather like the sideways thrust a spaceship gets after swinging out of a planet's orbit.
I don't like the new Missiles much. The lock-on cursor is very flash, and there's a big explosion, but they cause minimal damage. And what really bugs me is that the hit ship stops dead; causing you to ram into the back of them. In the old WipEouts, they threw the ship into the air so that you could nip under them with perfect timing.
The Quake Disruptor is as cool as ever, but it still looks nowhere near as good as the one in 2097. It's almost as bad-looking as Wip3out's. It doesn't throw ships into the air any more either. When you get hit with one, the controller just vibrates as it passes under you and takes away some shield energy. It doesn't hinder your passage at all. Just plain Wrong.
And the Flamethrower is fecking poo. It doesn't even LOOK like a proper flamethrower; it's just a long yellow cloud. It's totally silent too; the controller doesn't even vibrate when you use it. Now, the the flamethrower in Hogs Of War; THAT'S good stuff. It's quite fun to play with, though; nudge your ship from side to side and the flame waves wildly from one side of the track to the other (Reminds me of that bit in The Mummy Returns when whatshisname says to whatshername with the torch "You know, if you do that fast enough, you can almost write your name"). The damage to hit ships lingers after the flamethrower has stopped flaming them; I expected some dramatic devouring flames but they just get a silly-looking yellow halo.
The Plasma Bolt doesn't eliminate on contact any more! It doesn't even make a nice hissy noise when powering up.
The Shield lets you fire weapons while it is still engaged. While this seems like a big advantage (and it is), it's stupid. In the previous WipEouts, if you saw someone with a shield, you couldn't hurt them, but at least you knew that they couldn't hurt you either.
Wipeout Fusion - my review.
