Ten things I rather quite like about wipEoutFusion

[Asayyeah]

Pretty good idea Al & Username : to be able to select the weapons you like...
I will choose the couple : Bombs + Rockets.
Rockets to shoot the bombs from others and bombs ...to shoot You

[username]

hehehe, i would select ... hmm ... (if it was a pair of two), rockets and missile i think. but i dont lie the way the missile bounces off of the walls in pure. too cartoonish, but the turning curve of th issile is perfect imo

[Zerow]

Thought I'd bump up this thread, as I'd like to voice my opinion of this topic.

Ten things I like about Fusion:

1) The start of each race, where you see the ships come up from below the ground. Very cool.

2) E.G.r - Without question one of the best of the new teams from Fusion. Fingers crossed they'll be brought back in the next WipEout.

3) Mandrashee 3 (Forward). 'Nuff said.

4) THAT jump on Florion Heights 3. First time I soared off that, I was like "Fuuuuck!", and it's still a joy to leap from now.

5) The inverted straight on Katmoda 12. I love every second of it. The way it jerks down and then sweeps you back forward is just beautiful. I'm hoping something similar to it appears on one of the tracks in the next WipEout.

6) The soundtrack. Indeed, it features some of the best songs to grace a WipEout game. My personal favourites are 'Krushyn' by Elite Force, and of course, 'Smartbomb (Plump DJs Mix)' by BT.

7) Zone mode. I have to agree that Fusion's Zone mode is way better than Pure's, but the latter redeems itself a bit in my eyes in that the enviroments it takes place in are very cool!

8 ) The menu song. I really love listening to it, far more so than Pure's.

9) The enviroments. I have to agree that Fusion has the best looking enviroments of any WipEout so far. Here's hoping this is how the enviroments shall be in the next game.

10) The overall game's daring to be different. It's by far the most experimental of all the WipEout sequels. The others are all just the same general noodling with only one or two tweaks. Sure, there's a fair few ideas that don't work - the excessive violence spoils the racing considerably; the handling's crap compared with 2097; and the upgrading system dosen't feel right - but hey, at least it tried. Like the old saying goes: "Don't knock it untill you try it."

[Shem]

good thing you bumped this up Zerow, i guess i should throw in 10 cents of mine:

1) Pilot selection. Good thing, a tribute to the original Wipeout? Probably, no matter how stupid pilot 3d heads look like. I prefer logos instead, but hey, pilot selection!

2) EGr (or EG-R?). That was a cool team. Looked good.....and that's it It'd fit other wipeouts quite well.

3) Zone mode. It was nice.

4) Luke Slater - Bolt Up.

5) Unlockable artwork.

6) uhm.....

7) i think.....well.....

hmm...well, there's gotta be something.....

9) maybe that track with the big drop? oh yeah, Florion Heights 3. That track was cool in general.

10) I got hyped cause of the early pics of the game. That's a good thing i guess.

[Zerow]

Two more things for my list:

11) Xios - Some of you may hate this team, but I love them. Another Fusion team that really should be given a second chance at least.

12) The website. It's superb, far better than Pure's, in my opinion. I hope to God this is what the website for the next WipEout shall be like.

[Sausehuhn]

I would love to see the website's design as the menu design of the future WipEout.

[Albino Ace]

I definitely agree with Florion Height 3 (big moma jump! ) and the soundtrack. Sick is one of my favorites, Krushyn is cool too. However, I kinda liked Wip3out's soundtrack better, in a way...Piranha and Xpander were a couple of my favs from that one. (Icaras wasn't too shabby either.)

[username]

i dont like the jumps on fusion, make the games shabby handling engine bad points show more than ever!

[Lance]

.
There's a separate thread for things you dislike; this thread is for things you like
.

[andy]

Can't think of ten so here goes:
1. The music
2. Mandrashee No.3F
3. Tigron and it's retro Mig-ness
4. Grenades =)

[DJ Techno]

1) Auricom

2) Pirhana

3) Florian Heights

4) The Moon

5) Elite Force-Krushym

6) Feisar

7) Racing

Acceleration over 2000KPH-thats still over a thousand miles per hour

9) Techno-Still runs the head of the SEC (as soon as i get it back on)

10) Studio Liverpool, just had to work harder to get the spot going.

[Chill]

1- Music is OK.
2- Zone mode.
3- Challenge modes are truly challenging.
4- Unique feel from the normal trend of Wipeout.
5- Large selection of weapon, though they could be better.
6- EG.r
7- Pics.
8- Menu Design.
9- Normal glass stadium and starting line design.
10- The rush I had when I "first got it and haden't played it yet"...

[PIRANHA MASTER]

I like of fusion:
The soundtrack
Challenge mode
Zone mode
Huge jumps
The graphics
Some ships
The cheats of airplanes
I hope you agree!

[Sausehuhn]

Got Fusion in my hands again and - damn - I really enjoy it!

I don't know what it is, but the game has a very, very nice mood to it. I really have the feeling I'm part of the league and the tracks and their surroundings seem so real and believable. You really have the feeling the tracks are build into the environment and not the other way around. You can look around you and all you see is the environment. In Pure/Pulse I always feel like there are two lines of buidlings around the track and behind that there's nothing but a simple sky-bitmap.
It's unbelievable how detailed the tracks are - really crazy! I think it's still a damn good looking game - even though it's so many years old.

And yes: I'm a fan of the freespace areas (even though some objects and barriers are annoying if you don't know them). Damn I can just imagine how good this game must feel with WO2097/WO3's handling and a few magstrips for the loopings and the drop-downs.
I simply love how smooth the game plays. I know there's no bottoming-off and the ships are locked to the track - but really, I don't think that's so different with Pure/Pulse (and probably WOHD) too. The bottoming-off in those three games is rather annoying to me, because it just pulls your nose high and that's it. Actually you push down to avoid it. Pure/Pulse/HD don't offer anything real floaty to me.
Nonetheless I'm enjoying these games. And so do I with Fusion.

I have to admit I hate the menu design and some crafts look really wierd, but overall this is a really nice game.

And to me, almost none of all the tracks has anything bad to it. The 2nd and 3rd track variants are longer than every track we've seen since Pure and, yeah, they're fun to race. I can't tell the reverse tracks are in any way less entertaining than the forwards tracks (unlike Pulse).
(Probably because of the length) every track, reverse or not, has something special to it. I do not want to miss any of them.

With today's possibilities we would probably see a bit more neon here and there, but nonetheless it looks awesome without it (seems like HD could have some overdone neon-effects anyway. I mean: Flashing anchors for billboards?! wtf?!).

Ah, and the music is top-notch stuff!


And it has wipeoutzone.com in the credits, that' surely a plus factor

[Lance]

Max, you were always one of the very few who enjoyed the game. You defended it against intense criticism by most other players when you first joined the WZ.

[Sausehuhn]

Heh, yeah, back in the days, eh?
It's just that I played new versions of WipEout and also old ones. 4 years ago (I was young then! ) that wasn't the case.
Now I can compare the different games and see things with different eyes.
I sure wouldn't say everything I said back in the past now.

[Lance]

Nor would I. That's true of most people, I hope, though there are some who never change their opinions, who are always closed to new data.

[eLhabib]

Max, you brought up a point I recently noticed that bothers me about the more recent wipEout titles: track lenght. One thing that Fusion definitely did right was reeeeaaally long tracks. Nowadays most laps are completed in under half a minute, which is a SHAME, for crying out loud!

[blixabargeld]

fast game, fast races/laps. it's perfect for a game on psp..

[RJ O'Connell]

I) The soundtrack to this game might be the best overall since Wipeout XL and it STILL hasn't been matched by either Pure, Pulse or HD. Papua New Guinea, Bassheads, Sick, Big Groovy "Funker", Synasthesia, and Smartbomb are all fantastic songs to race to. Sure, there's no CoLD SToRAGE, but many of the songs featured - not including those I just mentioned - can fit in very well in earlier games.

II) Looking at screenshots of Fusion, most of us would think the graphics look flat, cartoony and not very impressive in general. F-Zero X for the Nintendo 64 recieved the same kind of criticism ten years ago. But you know what these two games have in common? A fluid 60 frames per second framerate, that keeps on running at that speed even with several ships on screen firing weapons at one another. To paraphrase Lance Price: 'Sometimes it's best to have just the essentials.' Until Wipeout HD is released, Wipeout Fusion is still the only game to run this fast. That alone makes up for the "bland" textures of the game.

III) Thanks, Max, for bringing up track length. We all know Altima VII in the original Wipeout wasn't a track you could lap in 25 seconds. But we still love it anyway. But now we're lapping almost every track in the game at well under 30 seconds - and that's just at Flash speed! If you were a fan traveling a great distance to see a grand prix race, you'd appreciate it if the race didn't last just under two minutes in time. That's why I love the long, minute-and-a-half laps at Cubiss Float. The race doesn't just whizz by you. You can dominate and put everyone else a lap down, or you can get more time to recover from a catastrophic fall off the track.

IV) I love the idea of super weapons. It adds a little extra personality to each team, and they all fit the ideals of the teams quite well. Case in point - the Nitro Rocket was built for a ramming specialist ship in mind. Like the Tigron Bull. Is there anything scarier than turning into an icicle and knowing that you can be eliminated by just being slammed into from behind? Furthermore, multiplayer exclusive weapons added even more unique strategy, and made the game more fun when played against another human. And those originated in WipEout, don't you know. I've heard the weapons described as a "grab bag" before, but you know, I liked the extra artillery.

V) I didn't like the upgrade system. The speed class method was fine. But you know what was awesome? That with each new level of upgrades, the ships' looks took on a more extreme design. Eventually, at what we consider the equivalent to Phantom level, they were just flat out crazy - christ, the Xios ship looks like the bastard child of an X-Wing and an Evangelion unit! In my opinion, this symbolizes what going to the further speed classes means - the racing becomes more intense, faster, harder, even more insane. It's actually quite fitting. I just wish Wipeout Team didn't have to rip off Gran Turismo to accomplish it.

Part II coming soon