I have been playing Pure for a while now (I'm halfway through flash class) and I want to tell you my quick review on its physics, which also concerns the overall handling of the game.

First thing I have to say: IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE 2097/XL. So in case you are still hoping for that to happen, forget it. You will have to settle for something totally new, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

wipEout purE is VERY different indeed from previous wipEouts once you understand how the whole physics engine works, but when you compare its handling to previous wipEouts it FEELS CLOSER TO 2097/XL THAN TO ANY OTHER PREVIOUS W'O''. And that is the point.

Pure is the first wipEout to feature 'realistic' physics, such as real GRAVITY, ACCELERATION, and MOMENTUM. I will explain this:

GRAVITY - in previous wipEouts, when you where going on a slanted track, or even one that is turned upside down like in Fusion, it didn't have any effect on your craft. Now in purE, if the track is f.ex. slanted to the right side and you are going perfectly straight on it, your craft will start drifting down to the right side and you will have to compensate that by steering ever so slightly to the left.

ACCELERATION is also affected by gravity, means you will accelerate a lot slower uphill than downhill. That's especially noticeable when you get hit by, let's say, a rocket when you're on a climbing track, it will stop you right down, and you will heve a rather hard time accelerating veeery slowly up the hill. On the other hand, when you get hit while going steeply down on a track, it will ownly slow you down a bit and you will be back to normal speed pretty quickly.

This goes hand in hand with MOMENTUM. Picture this: an enemy craft way ahead drops a bomb onto the track and another craft that is very close to yours crashes into it. Now there are a number of effects this can have on you. If the bomb explodes on your left side, its shockwave will push your ship to the right, and vice versa. If it explodes right in front of you, the shockwave might actually push you back a little bit and stop you right down. If it goes off right behind you, the wave might even give you a slight push forward! This shows that the programmers have incorporated a real set of physics into this game which no w'o'' has ever featured before.
You can also notice this in rather sharp turns. Here the handling differs the most from the previous games, as you really slow down a lot in the sharp turns because all your momentum is lost. In the faster speed classes you won't notice this much, but in vector and venom it can get annoyingly slow in sharp turns - which, again, is realistic, but it takes a bit away from the arcade-like original w'o'' feel.

I'm pretty sure that the new physics are also the reason they had to change the elevation on the classic tracks so much, f.ex. the hill after the tunnel on sagarmatha used to be so steep that you probably couldn't even climb it on vector with the new physics.

So, all in all, it feels a little more like an AG-racing simulation than the earlier games. I'm not sure whether this decision was good or not, i know there are some people on the forums that won't like it. It is something you will just have to get familiar with, and to be honest, on faster speeds you won't even notice it much, it will just annoy you sometimes in vector and venom, when you feel like you're not pressing the x-button properly because your ship is having a hard time accelerating...

The bottom line is: don't get turned away from this game because it does not feel like ye olde w'o''. Don't expect it to be 2097/XL ver.2. It won't be. It's something completely new, and it is good, really is.

I would be glad if some of the other early purE pilots could confirm and correct this, and it would also be nice if Colin could have a word on this (I don't wanna be spreading things about the physics that are in fact totally wrong). Thank you.