
Find yourself at the back of the pack and the track ahead is a mess of vapour trails and plasma showers, obscuring a route that's already in danger of getting lost amidst the brickwork. Without the cleanliness and clarity of the future of old, there's a visual clutter that shifts the emphasis away from skill and more towards luck. It's WipEout's most dramatic aesthetic shift, but it's not necessarily its most successful. There's a story being told here, too - throughout the three seasons of 2048's single player campaign, WipEout's more traditional vision slowly emerges, culminating in visits to Altima and Sol, tracks from the series' past.
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Races zip across the Brooklyn Bridge, scale the side of the Empire State Building and spiral through shopping malls. There's another line being drawn here - the vehicles of WipEout 2048 are, with more primitive lines and an audible chug and whine, anti-gravity racing's Napiers.Īnd so the concrete and steel of previous WipEouts is swapped out for the stonework and masonry of a half-imagined, half-real take on New York. A stirring intro video traces the line from Brooklands race track to a near-future Brooklyn, telling how the world of racing lifted itself above the tarmac. Studio Liverpool has turned the clock back to attain that spectacle, offering up a prequel of sorts. It's an effective showcase, too - witnessing the fidelity and detail as seven fellow anti-grav racers make a violent ascent from a busy New York cityscape, all between the palms of your hands, has as much impact now as the original did some 17 years ago. Manage cookie settingsĪnd now there's WipEout 2048, providing proof of the Vita's abilities as a high-end, high-spec portable. This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. It's a technical feat that's sadly been replicated rarely since, ensuring that both HD and Fury remain high watermarks in the PS3's library.
#Wipeout 2048 xbox 360 1080p
Here was gaming in 1080p and at 60fps, all served up as a digital download. More recently, WipEout HD was proof of concept for a future that's yet to be fully realised. It started with the PlayStation debut, a game that did more than just usher in the 3D age - it lent gaming an edgy credibility that helped pave the path to success for Sony's then fledgling interactive empire.
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WipEout's been much more than a futuristic racing series since its inception - it's been one that's screamed that the future is, in fact, now. This is WipEout at its best, and it's preserved, in part, for the series' Vita debut. It's made more urgent by Zone's airbrushed psychedelics, and more urgent still by the steadily escalating speed of the ship at your fingertips. It's the drop halfway around this sky-bound track that does the trick a blind crest that gives way to nothing, the track pulled from beneath you and leaving you suspended for a handful of panicked seconds. It's by surrendering myself to WipEout 2048, and more specifically, to Zone mode on the track Sol. It's not by counting the grey hairs in my beard, nor is it by examining my receding hairline, checking my bank balance or reading up on whatever tropical disease is in vogue.
