Joining The Club!

[Rapier Racer]

Does anyone on these boards actually like Naks Acid? Really don't know how they could put that in the game

[The Uncreated]

As a child of the seventies with his nostalgic heart still stuck in the eighties, I shamelessly admit that I like it. I listen to Acid House, among other forms of techno music.

Uncreated

[infoxicated]

Man, I'm a child of the 80's and I thought the entire soundtrack for Wipeout Pure sucked!

Quite happy about the way the Pulse soundtrack is shaping up, though.

[rdmx]

I expect to see Foxx racing to 'Kids in America' then?

[infoxicated]

Hah!

Apparently on the product tour done a couple of weeks back, the game had the Walking on Sunshine mp3 playing on it.

For myself it'll probably contain a blend of some older Wipeout stuff and a selection of tracks off of disc two of the recent God's Kitchen compilation - very Wipeouty stuff.

[Asayyeah]

Naks Acid
The real new one i love from Pure soundtracks is Mean Red by Themroc

The real shocker is that I'm here typing instead of off doing exactly that. Uh... gotta go, bye!

Ahaha that's always what i am thinking while i am writing too much

[Task]

So I've finally finished with Vector and Venom! All TT done, all SR, all Tournaments... except for that Venom Descension, I've started it twice but I keep having to sleep it partway through and it just crashes the PSP when I resume, so I've put off that one till I'm alone for an hour. So I'll likely get to it, oh, next year or something. 8 )

Anyway, all those gold medals have learned me several new things:

The AI Opponents: On the track there are 8 ships. One is you, "the hero", who (for the reason of, uh, tradition) starts in last place and should win the thing. At the front is "your nemesis", a ship that will always be fast (even if it's a Feisar, which is really hilarious) and tough to beat. Behind that ship is "the chaser", his sole purpose is to fire weapons at "your nemesis" in order to slow him down a bit. He's a shade on the fast side, but you'll pass him. Clustered around you at the beginning are "the sheep", a bunch of ships that create massive firepower storms if you have the incredible unfortunateness be stuck in their midst at the wrong point in time. Just ahead of them is "the shepherd", a ship (or couple of ships, no more than 2 ships at any given time) who leads the sheep around. If you can't get past him, then you haven't yet escaped the wrath of the sheep, but if you have, then you're pretty much free and clear of them the rest of the race. This would be easy, except for one thing: For the first lap of the race, all the opponent ships are cheating. If you want to pass anyone, even a Feisar, you're going to have to hit a boost pad when they haven't.
This definitely leads to an exciting race, and that's totally a good thing. But I don't really like the method they chose for creating the exciting race. I want a challenging opponent, but if the computer has to cheat to create that challenge... There's got to be a better way.

The Barrel Roll: Okay, here's a good story. Initially, I was lifting the thumb off the d-pad, then pressing left, right, left (or whatever) to create the BR. This wasn't working very well. Quickly, I learned that I needed to "roll" my thumb on the d-pad, hitting the left-right-left without taking the thumb off the control. This worked a lot better. I'm far from getting it every time I want it, and once I even got it when I didn't want it, but it's definitely working better. Still, it's hardly a maneuver I can really count on. Sometimes I manage it, sometimes I don't. But that's not what really bugs me about it, not at all. I don't mind that it's tough to pull off, even kind of appreciate that. What really bothers me about the barrel roll maneuver is that every time I do it, I feel like I'm trying to, uh, "stimulate" my PSP. I rub it just the right way, and suddenly my ship freaks out and is soon going really fast but it's kind of tired afterward, and I have to absorb a weapon to get it ready for another go. Now I'm pretty sure that the Japanese just love this kind of thing, but oddly enough it's not really what I was planning on doing with my sexy black pocket machine, ya know? Maybe I'm the weird one here, that's always a possibility. Does anyone else get this?

Free Play & Time Trial: The Vector Time Trials I went right through, picked up those golds real quick, but the Venom ones weren't so easy. There were about 4 tracks that I just couldn't get a good time on. So this weekend I spent some time in Free Play on them and finally got them. Then I moved on to Flash and found out that a little bit of Free Play before tackling the Time Trial for each track was definitely a good maneuver. I did Vineta K in 3 tries, Bronze-Silver-Gold, but I knew Modesto Heights would take me forever (it was tough for me in just Venom) so I did about 20 laps in Free Play and got the gold Time Trial in my first shot! Anyway, my point is that the Time Trial goals are varied, some are really easy, some are really tough, and I really enjoyed that challenge a lot more than I expected. I'm certain that the "challenges" from WO3 were a shadow of what they should be, and I'm positive that they really nailed the Time Trials here. This is definitely the way to do it. You know you've got a line for a track when you can beat the time, it's as easy as that. So now I attack each track in the structured manner of "Free Play (create a ghost time), Time Trial (get the gold), Single Race (get the gold), Tournament" and it's really working well. The only thing that stopped working well is that "next race" thing. I'm going track-at-a-time, so when I want to "move on" I don't want to move on to the next track, I want to move on to the next mode. It's too bad, I really liked that "next race" thing. It was great in WO3SE, and I liked seeing it back again.

So now I assault the Flash Beta league! Let's unlock Rapier!

[The Gracer]

Interesting structure. I just attack the game full force - no creating a ghost, just bam! straight in there. Ive unlocked Rapier, and ive mucked around with it in time trial, but im still not flying like i want to be. To be honest, i only have bronze in the first two flash tourneys. I have gold in the Ascension one though, which is strange.

I dont know who is winning the race to unlock everything! (yes, there is in fact a race, and no, i didnt tell you about it. )

[Medusa]

LOL! Great race description Task, I think you've nailed it. Personally I love it when FEISAR is the shepherd, I can give him a good bite on the way by...I'm a border collie - slightly mad with a bit too much jumping around and barking...

I haven't even unlocked the Descension tournament yet, I'm just getting all my TT and SR (and tournament) golds on the Alpha and Beta tracks to unlock the speed classes, then I'll go back to the other leagues. I've just started on Rapier...it's early to say, but I still feel skipping Flash would have been a great blessing. Oh well, the rest of game is great.

[q_dmc12]

I'm still waiting for that kai session

[Dogg Thang]

Wow, Task, that is incredible observation on the AI. I've been playing a lot of Pure recently with all the Pulse hype so I'm going to have to look out for that system.

The barrell roll observation, on the other hand, has frightened and disturbed me.

I worked through my US and JP versions of Pure and got gold in everything but, man, it's a real chore to do Venom and Vector on my UK version. I'd have loved a system where, if you get a gold in a specific class, it will give you all the golds of that same race in the classes below. But someday, I'm going to get all the golds in game.

[Task]

The barrell roll observation, on the other hand, has frightened and disturbed me.

8 D Glad you liked it!

man, it's a real chore to do Venom and Vector on my UK version.

I like how in Pulse we'll get all the speed classes, no unlocking necessary, but I myself really enjoyed working through Vector and Venom. It went really quickly, and it was a fast cycle of earning the reward (gold medal!) and moving on, so I had no complaints in that department at all. Of course, this is only my first time through the game, perhaps my opinion will change when I finish this one and move on to an EU version.

Continuing my Pure experience, I've finished with Flash for now. Haven't touched it since Friday I think. Been working purely (ha-ha) with Rapier. Damn, but I'm having a heck of a time with it. I'm sure I'll have Phantom unlocked for the WWT, but I won't have much practice with it. Man, I'm SO gonna get stomped...

Flash TT: These were supremely challenging. I'm not even finished them! I couldn't beat the Porto Kora, Odessa Keys, Extrosa Run, or Ubermall gold time. I couldn't even beat the BRONZE time for Khara Descent! The difficulty level is just _way_ up there, and I'd say that the TT challenges are an excellent place to hide the extreme difficulty of the game. Going through SR is laughably easy in comparison. I can't say enough good things about how well it works. Some of the challenge times I could nail on my first or second try, no problem. Some of them really required concentrated effort. Some of them were so challenging I had to put them aside so I could move on to the next speed class. That level of difference between them made moving from one TT challenge to the next a bit of an adventure, and a really good one at that.

Rapier: The game really starts to get difficult here. Going through the SR set really nailed home how well I'd learned each track up to that point. I would either earn my gold fairly quickly, or I wouldn't even place in the race. It's really showing what seem to be some not-so-attractive features as well though. Travelling at these speeds really brings into stark contrast collision events. Getting hit by a weapon, scraping the track, or slamming into a low-hanging sign, they all feel strange at these speeds. I mean, you're travelling at several hundred kph, something drastic happens, and you come to a dead stop? Wouldn't that kill the pilot? And where's the rebound effect? When I hit something (or something hits me!) at these speeds and it's not a head-on collision, I'd expect to be bounced off it a bit. Instead, it's like I scrape a wall and I'm stuck to it a bit, it takes definite effort to come off the wall. I'll likely stop noticing this once I'm a good enough pilot that I'm not hitting stuff all the time, but for what's supposed to be a racing game I'm spending a disturbing amount of time at a dead stop.

FW 3.02: I was finally able to run the Descension tournaments! Went through both the Venom and the Flash without crashing the PSP! Yay!

Teleportation: I'm a definite fan of the system Pure has for determining where to put you back on the track when you track-out. It's a little back from where you left the track, but it's instantaneous. I think it would be a lot better if you had some speed when you came back, since there are times I've been put back at a location where having no speed means I just fall off the track again, sometimes several times in a row, and that's just not good. But that terrible bug from Fusion where you get placed back on the track further ahead than you left it seems totally gone, and that's a great relief. That being said...

Track-out: The system for determining when it's time to teleport you back onto the track seems _way_ too rigid. Staten Park is one my favourite tracks in Pure, but when you turbo over the peak you're looking at the track jog to the right and then come back left, and several times I've been flying over this v-shaped gap, and it looks like I'll make it fine to the other side, but I get teleported back to the peak. If there's a chance I can make it, I want to go for it! I certainly prefer a more stick-to-the-track approach, but flying is a part of WO, and imposing artificial limits on where you can fly is more than a little on the cheap side. If you don't want anyone flying there, put a building there or something! Actually, as a more complete fix, I propose a radical change to the whole wuss wagon concept. Remember Spy Hunter, the arcade box? Remember that button you had in the middle of the steering wheel, and you'd press it to signal your truck to pull over so you could enter and upgrade your car? That's my propsal for the WO Wuss Wagon. Unless you come to a complete stop off the track, the wuss wagon won't pick you up. However, you can (at any time!) press Start and the wuss wagon will pick you up and put you back on the track! That's my suggestion.

Khara Descent: How come Quake doesn't work here? What's up with that? Strangeness!

And so I continue my descent into Pure, ever heading towards the ultimate achievement of beating Phantom races...

[Dogg Thang]

Task, I think what you might have there is a prerelease version of the Delta Khara Descent track. A version made it up on the Pure site before it was announced. If I remember correctly it was that very track and quakes didn't work but I'm pretty sure that quakes work fine on the fixed version that was up when it was officially announced.

Which version are you playing? I know the quakes work in my EU version as I was playing that just yesterday but I could check either of the other versions for you if you like.

[Hellfire_WZ]

I have a feeling that bug wasn't fixed in the US version, I remember a lot of people complaining about it on the GameFAQs boards

[Dogg Thang]

I think you might be right about that, Hellfire. My memory is all hazy on it.

[Task]

Yeah, I'm playing the US version ATM.

Total weapon carnage, no Quake on Khara Descent, bonus download packs are Jak & Daxter and SOCOM. I can't really see anything remarkable about this version of the game, but at least I'm not flying a Coke bottle! Those poor Japanese version people...

Which is why once I'm done this version I'm going to play the EU version.

[Task]

So I've had Phantom unlocked for a week now, and the vast majority of my practice in the game has been multiplayer(!!!), and I'm still having difficulty getting the Phantom SR golds. 8 P
There are even some Flash TT golds eluding my grasp as well.

Making it even more difficult is that I've got the EU version now. I was playing it a bit yesterday, totally owning the Vector Alpha Tournament, just to make sure it works you know. Once everyone was gone, I couldn't help myself, I had to try some more of the EU version! Unlocked Flash (still a fun process, even if there isn't any challenge to it anymore), listened to the new music tracks (not as good as I was hoping, but not bad at all), and then... Tried out the Omega tracks!

Burgertown was first, and my eyes nearly exploded out of my head. Luckily Cardcity was next, that track was soothing to my senses. Reminded me a lot of Quake 2... The hairpin on it reminded me of Citta Nuova. Then it was Paris Hair, like I needed any more "weird" in my life. 8 )
The final track, and in my opinion the best, 123Klan! I definitely love the spiral climb and descent.

I think the only thing that'll keep me playing the NA version is that I've nearly got the 200 golds and in the EU version I have all those TT races to go through again... That's a lot of TT ahead of me, the task is daunting!

And the temptation to get onto the EU tables is strong...

Well, if you see me appear on the EU tables with a load of crappy times, you'll know which temptation was stronger! 8 D

[Medusa]

if you see me appear on the EU tables with a load of crappy times

Hey that's my job!

So I've had Phantom unlocked for a week now, and the vast majority of my practice in the game has been multiplayer(!!!),
I know the feeling - nearly every track I've raced, the first Phantom race was done on Kai. How to embarass oneself, step #1...not that I'm improving much though.

[RJ O'Connell]

What's an "Omega Track"?

[q_dmc12]

discipline of the mind is the first step to achieving "fly-by-zen"