Well, it’s how the PS1 started…
By Koworld

What makes a classic? It’s hardly ever about quality. Take the Ford Capri. A supremely rubbish car but even back in the ‘70s it was obvious that it was a classic in the making.

Ridge Racer, the PSP RR remix, is a Ford Capri – an instant classic despite not actually being that special. It’s timing that’s earned RR its classic status. Many years from now, when the dusty old PSP finds its second-wind as retro curiosity – you’ll be recalling Ridge Racer with great fondness, even as your Space Kids ignore you preferring to concentrate instead on their Space Internet and it’s amazing Space Web ‘pages’.

Yay. Batmobile moment.

Ridge Racer is one of the three stand-out launch titles for PSP (Lumines and Ape Escape Academy being the other two). Almost everyone with a PSP has it and for many players it was all they had for the first month or so, forcing those people into extended play time, whether they liked driving games or not.

Top of the thankfully short snag-list is the lack of challenge from other cars. Catch-up and pass is the slightly dull name of the game, with rarely more than two cars on-screen at a time. Ironically this disappointment turns into a big strength during the best races in the game: the handful of one-on-one duels. Racing against a single strong opponent is fantastic: difficult, exacting and great. The same effect can be had using the superb wireless multiplayer option too – we tried it out at South Mimms Services and had a cracking time.

What drifting looks like after a few quarts of absinthe.

Unlocking tracks and cars is nicely rewarding – doing so pushes you along into better, faster races and delivers a solid feeling of progression as you climb the classes. The cars themselves however are pretty limited in that there’s only a small handful of basic body types and just three handling models. Although there’s a lot of corner-drifting, I found anything other than the ‘mild’ drift types to be next to useless on higher difficulty levels.

Okay, so this isn’t a game for manic, battling over-takers, and the car variation is a bit limited. But what keeps you coming back for more is the sheer scale of the thing and the fantastic course designs. These are brilliant tracks on which to drive, with many offering real technical challenge – correct racing lines are crucial in places (and you are rewarded properly, with speed, for using them well) but it’s all nicely mixed with plenty of opportunity to drift the car on tires that squeal like fucked pigs on an Alabama farm.

Spaaaaaarks. In your hand. Haha. Bye-bye, Burnout 3.

Sound throughout is superb, from engine noises to sparse electronica and cheesy ELO-a-like soundtracks culled (like the race tracks themselves) from the entire Ridge Racer back-catalogue. You might want to turn off the announcer and race-critic though – unless you want to hurl your PSP out the window as a response to his inane pseudo urban wankery.

Races are nice and short – four and a half minutes and three laps is about average. This, and the PSP’s native suspend-mode (operated by a single flick of the power switch), makes Ridge Racer ideal for play out on the road. The form-factor too adds considerably to the racing experience – holding such a huge, fluid (the game runs as smooth as Baileys) and detailed screen in your hand changes the way you race: tilt the controller in exaggerated racer-style and the screen tilts too. It’s a very welcome sensation – you feel very connected to the road on which you are racing. All nice and immersive.

And the PSP’s analogue stick works perfectly for a driving game – although it isn’t actually a stick at all, as it doesn’t tilt on a fixed point. Rather you slide the whole button around on a 360-degree disc. Sliding rather than tilting feels right in a racer – it’s the next best thing to a wheel.

Not bad, but not that special, either. Still, just you wait until 2011.

February 2005

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