Ridge Racer

One of the oddities of reviewing a game for a site such as Ready Up is that games frequently come on plain looking discs with no manuals. This means that when we review a game, if anything is not obvious in-game, there is no manual to turn to for help. With Sony’s turn towards digital downloads for the Vita, many people will buy Ridge Racer from the online store, download it and be in the same boat I was in. Staring at the main menu, confused. After spending ten minutes scrolling back and forth using the touchscreen looking for a button that said “Campaign” or “Single Player”, I eventually stumbled across the button to bring up the digital manual and had a look.

Ridge Racer, it seems, doesn’t really have what you’d call a single player campaign, with only three race modes on offer. World Race is your multiplayer racing mode, Spot Race is a sort of Quick Race mode against AI cars, and Time Attack is exactly what it sounds like, a best lap time mode. All of these modes earn you credits, which you can use to upgrade your car, which is then used across all three modes. There’s no separate multiplayer progression here.

World Race seems to be the bulk of the game, where you can race online against people over the internet with up to eight online players per race. You can also race against other people’s uploaded ghosts to try and beat their times, or play a face to face battle against someone else with a Vita in your immediate vicinity. The online racing mode works well enough, with decent lobbies that are only marred by the irritating fact that there is only one song that plays while you’re in them, over and over again like you’re on hold.

So, to the actual racing. You get to race on one of only three tracks, which have been stretched out to a dubious six by the addition of letting you drive around them backwards. The graphics look nice and bright on the Vita’s wonderful screen, and the game flows smoothly along. There’s a tremendous sense of speed conveyed. The racing is extremely arcadey, which will come as no surprise to anyone who played Ridge Racer before. Drift is the name of the game, as you get your car sideways through even the gentlest of corners to keep up your speed and build up nitrous for use on the straights.

Take your Vita away from a network connection, though, and you are only left with Spot Race and Time Attack. Spot Race is fine, but how many times are you really going to want to race against AI racers on the same three tracks? Time Attack comes with all the prerequisite leader boards, so if seeing your name in lights is what flicks your switch, you could get quite a lot out of that mode. Again, though, with just three tracks you could quite easily become bored.