Pulse Preview Code Impressions!

[eLhabib]

***UPDATE: Scroll down for Firstlook of wipEoutulse! Screens included!***

Hi guys, been a while.
Without further ado, on to the interesting stuff: as some of you might know, I started a gaming blog together with a friend. Well, today I received a preview code UMD of wipEoutulse!!! I just completed a couple of races a minute ago, and I am pretty amazed at what I am seeing. Sorry to say I don't have much time right now to write about it, but expect a full feature with screens and whatnot by Sunday afternoon on my gaming blog (www.elhabib.at) - and yes, it's in german, but don't worry, I'll provide you all with an indepth look in english tongue here in this thread. Check back here frequently!

*WOOOOOOO, I'm EXCITED!!!*

[Sausehuhn]

damn why is it just the language and not also the location we have in common?

Congrats mate. Please give us some video, too

[Riccardo Raccis]

Crikey. What do I have to do to get a preview UMD too?

Oh by the way - kudos man

What are EG-X's stats compared to the other teams?

[q_dmc12]

damn why is it just the language and not also the location we have in common?

Congrats mate. Please give us some video, too

Well, we could call it the Nordic language

[Piranha5p33d5]

We await your input with baited breath eLhabib..

[MAMUTH]

wooow... i´m really looking forward...give us some video as well...I can´t wait till september (too bad it will take another half year before it will come to czech republic )

[eLhabib]

Alright guys, this is it. Just played through the first couple of Single Player events and now it's time to give you all the info you want!

Where do I start? First of all, the art style: as I stated before, a perfect blend of purE and w3o, so pretty much a dream come true for me and many others around here. The HUD is very slick, minimalistic, with a very noticeable w3o touch - cool thing about the new HUD: it blurs with the speed as you activate a turbo or go over a speed pad, it shakes as your ship gets hit or bottoms out!

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_121815.jpg
Triakis on the starting grid, with new, dynamic HUD

Also, there is a new, oval hub mode (as seen above), which defaults to the 1st person view, but you can set it to be permanent (which I instantly did, because it looks SO sweet!) kinda looks like the hud from Metroid Prime, if you happen to know that one, like the inside of a concave windshield - very cool!

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_121720.jpg

Game graphics are crisp and smooth, like you would expect from purE's sequel, no noticeable slowdowns so far. Style is pretty much similar to purE, maybe a bit more technical (haven't seen any lush environments á la Blueridge yet - but I am sure there are).

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...615_194731.jpg
mag strip action

Track design: as you know, there are those fancy new mag strips, which glue you to the track, which makes some pretty cool track layouts possible, like vertical sections, spirals and loops. Basically it makes the rollercoaster elements from Fusion possible again, without having to alter the floaty physics - oh, yeah, PHYSICS! Quite a bit floatier than purE's, pitch control now does a significant amount of difference in jumps and also when cornering (I already managed to cut some corner-shortcuts ), so w3o fans rejoice, it's getting there! Of course, the physics are cancelled out when on a mag strip, but these parts of track are usually rather short and only for some fancy effect (rather dull challenge-wise, seeing as a loop or spiral is basically a straight line to fly along) But cool nevertheless!


a vertical drop and ascent, fusion memories

Ship design: the ships we know from purE are back with pretty much the same designs, but more elaborate, and more detail. Feisar, AG Systems, Assegai, Triakis, Qirex, and Piranha are pretty much what they were in purE, Goteki has a new design which resembles w3o, and....

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_115722.jpg
the new old Goteki

...AND (Max, listen up!) there is a new team named EG.X, which, judging by it's name and colors, is a joint force of EG.r and Xios - awesome!

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_122910.jpg
EG.X on a shortcut section

All the pics you see here were taken using the ingame PHOTO FEATURE, which is only available in-race, means I can't take any menu shots with it. I will, however post pics of the menu and all the ships' stat screens once I've figured out a way to take decent quality pics of the PSP screen with my digicam.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_115313.jpg
AG-5Y5, still agile and feeble

What the photo mode does is, it let's you take a picture whenever you pause the game, lets you choose different camera settings, zoom, and wether the HUD should be turned off or on, and then, after you take the picture, automatically puts it in an own 'wipeout' labelled folder on your memory stick - perfect! The quality is as you see here - no editing done on my part.

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_121831.jpg
right before the GO!

ok what else can I tell you? AH, very excited about this one: in one of the loading screens, it says you will be able to design your own livery on wipeout.com (not online yet, I checked ) and then download it to your PSP for use in single and multiplayer races! Now THAT is what I have been waiting for!!! Can't wait to see what the zoners come up with!

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...616_121034.jpg
alone in the dark

Furthermore, there are now difficulty settings for the Single Player mode (has nothing to do with speed, just AI difficulty). My major concern up front is, that HARD is stil NOT HARD! I managed to win easily so far, but then I only did about 20 races. I hope this will turn out to be a really tough challenge eventually, but still, maybe the guys at SL could crank it up even more - right now, 'hard' feels like purE's difficulty (which should be 'medium' IMO - make 'hard' REALLY HARD PLEASE!)

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...615_195713.jpg
my darling assegai

well, that's all I can think of right now, didn't go into detail about tracks and weapons yet because I simply don't know what's what yet. I will give you insight on tracks, ships, weapons once I have played a little more, definitely before next weekend.
If any of you have special requests or unanswered questions (I'm sure you have), I will provide info (and pictures) as quickly as possible. Sorry, I don't have a convenient way to make a gameplay video just yet, but I will figure something out!

enjoy, Space Cowboys!

[benjahman]

Woww!! Very very nice eLhabib, thanks a lot for your time. Your screenshots let us know a little bit more on pulse now, I really don't know how the f_ck you were able to play on pulse before everybody but you are damn hell lucky man. Thanks again !

[Riccardo Raccis]

Oh SO SWEET

Thank you dude, that's some kindness.

Customized liveries huh? I can see some madness ensue (and possibly some HORRIBLE liveries to be seen in the future. But c'est la vie )

Oh and we finally get to see the famed mag lock visual effect. Quite cool I might say. Do the vertical mag sections give the vertigo feel I'm expecting? (please say yes)

QUESTION: what about the teams stats? Is Qirex back to being Qirex? (are you listening Feliks?) Is Assegai ultra-manouverable again? How does EG-X perform?

As a side note: Triakis with camo livery - should have had one since Pure

Oh boy I just can't wait

[eLhabib]

Little update again.
It seems like I played through all there is to the preview code UMD, which is sadly only the first 3 stages of the Single Player Mode, consisting of a total of 24 events, including:

- Single Race: normal race with weapons against a field of 7 other racers

- Time Trial: alone against the clock, total race time counts

- Tournament: a series of races, points accumulate

- Speed Lap *NEW*: ten laps alone on track, best lap counts (one turbo per lap, same as Time Trial)

- Zone *NEW*: not the zone mode we used to know, but like a mixture of fusion's and purE's zone modes. you can use every single track in the game as zone track, in which case it gets a zone-style graphical makeover (very slick, track layout stays the same). you can still choose from teams, every team has an own zone ship design (can't tell if the stats differ between teams in zone mode, but I wouldn't think they do, so choice of team is only cosmetic here). rest stays the same - you gradually build up speed until you burn it seems a lot easier than in purE, you hardly lose energy from crashing. I managed to get up to zone 30 on my first attempt on a track I didn't know - maybe this will get tweaked.

what's more?
well, there IS some slowdown here and there, as well as some sound-hiccups, especially if you get fired at from behind. however, this is early preview code, so we have hopes that this will be ironed out.

Apart from the 'Race Campaign', as the career mode is called, there is the 'Racebox', which lets you create your own races, choose track, speed class, number of rivals on track, AI difficulty, weapons on or off etc.
Since the career portion of the preview UMD only takes place in Venom and Flash, I tried out Phantom in the Racebox mode, and boy it sure feels a tad faster than purE's phantom! unfortunately, the framerate seemed like it couldn't keep up with the speed here, but again, I have faith this will be fixed. Vector, btw, seems to be completely absent from the game (but hey, who cares? )

I will give you a breakdown of the 5 tracks and 8 teams in the preview version (and some of the weapons) a bit later today, possibly tomorrow - have to wait untill it's dark outside to be able to make pretty pictures of the menues with my digicam.

again, if you want to know anything specific I haven't mentioned yet, feel free to ask!

[Riccardo Raccis]

One minor glitch: is it me or the track texturing is a little inconsistent here and there? See the "mag strip action" pic.

[eLhabib]

there are some issues here and there. flying through walls, texture pop-in, disappearing speedpads - but this is early code, I'm sure this will be fixed.

[Medusa]

Ohhh...*gasp* it does remind me of WO3!

Thank you so much eLhabib, I am so glad to see it looks more realistic, less cartooney if you will (judging from screenshots).

(Although I am sad to see that AG SYS is still relegated to the weak pile. Someday they have to put it back where it was in the F3600 league.)

[Riccardo Raccis]

there are some issues here and there. flying through walls, texture pop-in, disappearing speedpads - but this is early code, I'm sure this will be fixed.

Oh okay

Back to those teams and tracks alright

[eLhabib]

sorry Lance, forgot about the picture size limit - it's been a while y'know

[RJ O'Connell]

Do you think you could, at the very least, PM the ship stats? It's for my whole log of fanfic news posts about the FX400, which can be read here.

Right now they're doing winter testing. I assume there hasn't been any radical changes in performance (FEISAR, AG-S)

[q_dmc12]

Thank you soo much Martin!

I assume the method inwhich you obtained a beta disk is a trade secret..

[Lance]

Too long, Martin; you're not here nearly enough.

[eLhabib]

I know, Lance, did you forget I used to hang around here a lot...

@q_dmc12: as I said, I have a gaming blog and we are currently getting pretty big (for Austrian standads), so we get stuff directly from the publishers. It's common use, and I am sure all other gamesites got the very same disc a couple of days ago, so you can expect a lot of features on all kinds of gamesites this or next week. I was just one of the fastest, that's all

as for the ship stats (please don't forget: this is a preview build, all of this is subject to change):

Feisar:
speed 7
thrust 8
handling 10
shield 8

AG Systems:
speed 7
thrust 9
handling 9
shield 8

Assegai:
speed 8
thrust 8
handling 9
shield 7

EG-X:
speed 8
thrust 9
handling 7
shield 7

Piranha:
speed 10
thrust 6
handling 6
shield 9

Qirex:
speed 8
thrust 7
handling 8
shield 9

Triakis:
speed 9
thrust 6
handling 6
shield 10

Goteki 45:
speed 7
thrust 10
handling 7
shield 8

I will post pics of each craft tonight, maybe even the stat screens (photographed), but at least something like this:

[Riccardo Raccis]

How nice that the stats are X/10 instead of X/5. Allows for more flexibility. I remember suggesting something like that. Go me!

So, like... Triakis is the new Qirex and Qirex is the new Auricom. Bold move here: Auricom ain't featured in the core game.

In the end, the Russians won

EG.X looks nice, sharing the same combined speed-thrust total with Goteki. HMMM.

Good luck handling that Piranha (wonder what my beloved Icaras will be stat'd like ).

That Assegai looks sexy.

It's all gonna be obscenely fun.

Thank you again eLhabib