Review Fugazi57 5/5 · Apr 6, 2021
MY GOD is this game good.
I was a Nintendo kid growing up so the only contact I had with the Ridge Racer series for a long time was through its music. I have this youtube series where I DJ Video Game Music that i deem fit for clubs, so of course I end up playing a lot of …
MY GOD is this game good.
I was a Nintendo kid growing up so the only contact I had with the Ridge Racer series for a long time was through its music. I have this youtube series where I DJ Video Game Music that i deem fit for clubs, so of course I end up playing a lot of RR music since it tends to SLAP. My first time actually playing the games was just recently when I had to record some footage from them for my videos.
I started out with the PS1 titles and boy, I did not have that great of a time. If I'm not mistaken, this was the series that first introduced drifting mechanics in 3D racing games! That is commendable, but I'm a huge fan of Outrun2 and HAVE YOU EVER DRIFTED IN THAT GAME??? It feels amazing. In my opinion no other arcade racing game controls like that - it is so fluid and although absolutely surreal and detached from reality, the drifting is one of the most satisfying movement mechanics I have ever seen in any video game, not only racing ones. I'm not even that big of a racing game fan, tbh!
That is to say that I came into Ridge Racer with high standards for how I think drifting should feel, and those PS1 titles (even up to R4) really disappointed me in that regard. The cars felt floaty and it was super hard to pull off drifts (maybe someone can give me some tips btw? I'd love to love those games since their aesthetic and music are so great).
I then gave up playing Rage Racer (or Ridge Racer 3) and though about maybe booting some Ridge Racer for the PSP on an emulator, since this song I'm playing for my next vid is also available there and BOY AM I HAPPY I DID THAT.
It feels very different from Outrun2, but in all the right ways. The cars have a lot of weight to them and feel very sticky. Drifting is incredibly easy to pull off: you just have to let go of the accelerator and boom, you're leaving those marks on the tracks. Even though it is easy, it is still feels super satisfying and very weighty. There's also an amazing sense of speed, and the easy-to-pull-off drifts add to that feeling. I love the visual aesthetic of the it as well and I think it looks great for a PSP game.
Ridge Racer for the PSP is a celebration of the RR series, so there's tracks from all previous games as well as some music! And oh my god, THE MUSIC. There's a lot of original tracks that sound AMAZING, as well as a bunch of super dope remixes and classic tracks.
It's overall an amazing package. The difficulty ramps up nicely and the presentation is clean and sleek. My only complaint is that there's only one song associated to each racing track, so they can get repetitive during the campaign. It is possible to choose whatever song you wish at the beginning of every race tho so it's all good!
I think it's a 9 outta 10!
PS. Does anyone know in which instalment of the series they made the controls more tight like that? Was it 5, 6 or 7?