10 Things I hate about WipEout Pulse

[sakerbax]

i think you're being too harsh.. pulse was the first wipeout that i played, and and im currently at grid 11 as a total newbie (didnt even know what airbrakes were) i must say it took some time just to do the first grid, after getting used to how the game plays it started getting fun. speed and trial gave me reasons to get better and while the first were easy it starts getting harder, and the singleplayer is huge,,

if a gold is too easy for a veteran does that really matter? we have ranking tables and in a near future downloadble ghosts to keep them happy with the competitive aspect.

and for newbies, a not too easy but a little practice away gold will keep them from giving up and in the process getting better, after that you'll have a new person addicted to the game and both ranking tables and online to improve their skills

[Frances_Penfold]

I'd rather see harder events on the grid single player as well-- but I'm not sure how much difference it makes in terms of the game's difficulty.

As with most things racing, the real measure of difficulty will be pushing the limits in time trials and online multiplayer against other experienced players-- right?

[QirexAAX]

I have to say I agree with Mr. Berry, I think the whole 'games as art' debate is a bit tired and irrelevant. There isn't any other medium that would really be considered art that ends up as so obvious a 'product' as a video game. I mean, certainly films and TV series end up as DVDs and paintings get marketed as posters and postcards, but that's really only a secondary industry - even for films that gross higher on DVD sales than at the box office.

Personally, when I buy a videogame, what I'm looking out for is quality of the product, I like something that somehow seems worth owning. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics that I finished reasonably quickly, and have little interest in playing again, I am glad I own because they feel like quality products and that somehow real work and real love went into making them. I know I sound like a totally raving capitalist but somehow I feel like, even if a game doesn't last that long or is a little too easy, if you get that sense of it being a quality peice and that it's worth your time (no matter how brief) and that you are glad to own it even after you are finished with it, it's a great thing.

I certainly feel like that with Pulse. Sure there may be a few snags but it's one of those games where you get the sense that the people who made it really knew what they were doing, like the feeling you get when you get into a vintage car that smells of petrol, oil, carpets and hard work. Sure the windscreen wipers might cut out when you're driving in the rain, and you may feel the handling isn't exactly as you want it to be, but who cares?

For anyone who considers videogames to be 'art': would you really sign up to a book forum and complain that the author used syntax that disagreed with you or that the protagonist didn't say "blow and blast" enough? Would you write a memo to Klimpt and say he went a bit heavy on the gold? Art criticism is one thing but I feel in video gaming the targets for that criticism are being set a little low and a little too specific. I'm afraid that if critics want games to be thought of as 'art' they need to broaden their own horizons to meet their expectations.

Also, thanks for providing those insights into the development process Colin, I found them really interesting.

[sakerbax]

this can easly evolve into an off topic discussion, but reading about art in games, made me remember an article i read about my favorite game of all time.

and after an easy search it's still online =)

Is Quake 3 Art?

[Medusa]

After reading all this...well, we'd all love to have the "perfect" wipeout game, but it seems video games have gone the same way Hollywood has - churn out enough product to keep the money coming in. Spend too much time making something "the best it can be", and the business goes into the red.

It's really not up to Mr.Colin Berry or any one person in particular, is it? It is driven by corporate demands. Sell millions of copies of your product or find another job. Isn't that what it boils down to?

"You're a slave to the money and then you die..."

[MarcoM]

All being said, I still think Pulse is a magnificent game. It's addictive. Has great controls. Looks absolutly stunning. It offers perfect enjoyment on the psp due to its relative shorts bursts of gaming.

And I absolutly love its scalability. Scalability in many ways. First the sound. You can have your own music. Not found in every game.

Second the level of difficulty. I am relativly new to WO (started with Pure), so I think Flash is a good and fun way of AG racing. But many veterans over here play Phantom wiht hard AI. Good for them! Over even online against even better contenders. This offers true scalability in terms of competetion.

And then there's of course the extra downloads. None have appeared yet, but I hope that SL is working on many extra tracks and ships.

[Roadster]

First of all thanks for not bashing me altogether, after all it was a pretty provocative post.
Second of all
Nope, didn't say that. If you really must subsume it than I'd say: If the only challenge a "game" provides is to find the time playing it, then it's not a game but just time passing by, as if nothing has happened. But that's rather simplified and may, again, be misunderstood.

Well, as far as I'm concerned some games are simply about the experience of playing rather than trying to beat a particular challenge. Although I do agree that more games should provide a stern challenge these days, and Wipeout is one such game - it's through the satisfaction of mastering a particular challenge that these sort of games provide most enjoyment.

On that note, I also agree about the Time Trials - Gold medals should be much, much harder to achieve, as it is right now the grids just seem like a checklist. Where's the satisfaction in that?

Not that I'm saying that Pulse is any easy game - just trying to safely manoeuvre the ship around some tracks on Rapier/Phantom is (for me) a challenge in itself.

[Colin Berry]

lots I could answer on this but I am a little pushed for time, so I'll focus on a couple of things

It seems to be a common misconcpetion that there are LOTS of wipeout fans out there.
Yes there is a core dedicated amount of fans that is for sure, however Pure was the first wipeout to sell over 1million. Yet despite a limited release in america, the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion. Wipeout fans are dedicated and loyal but alas it is a large genre racing, and a niche of that - futuristic, ergo we dont have the fan base of say NFS or burnout, or GT or even F1

The inital Wipeouts got a lot of acclaim and at the time they sold 'relatively' well
Its often said that in the first 3 months of ps1 in europe, 50% of people owned wipeout - that sound HUGE, but when you consider there were at most 100,000 ps1s, you suddenly see that the figures arent large.

When I talk about making Wipeout more accessible, I am not talking about attracting the people playing singstar or buzz, I am not talking about the casual market, I am talking about attracting games players who simply find the entry bar too high.

As such a new wipeout has a struggle, its a hardcore game, yet hardcore gamers are hard to please and often want something new, ergo you have to try and appeal to the gamers who are not the 'new breed' of casual gamers but who are games players who dont necessarily buy into the latest things but do have gaming tradition.


My best friend is a hardcore gamer, he buys games every week, owns almost every system and he spends as much of his spare time as his girlfriend allows, playing games, and a variety of games too. I havent given him Pulse yet, but when he played Pure it was his first wipeout since 2097, he plays a lot of racing games, but he really struggled with Pure for the first 30mins or so.
It was an eye opener for me, I thought it was too easy, yet here is someone I know is better at games than me in the most part and he is struggling early on, now he continued, cos... I told him to and he wanted to improve and see more, but it really made me realise how hard Wipeout is and can be even for people who are big gamers.

I think it is something that it is easy to lose sight of, I suspect these forums pretty much contain the top 200 Wipeout players in the world, indeed everyone on these forums is probably in the top 5000, even foxxy ! Its amazing to see how tricky the game can be initially for people who play games but are not Wipeout addicts. I really think again people on here would be surprised to see how hard the game is in the hands of someone not a huge dedicated fan.

Now I am not saying we make the whole game easier, but the entry bar has to be lowered in order to broaden the appeal, not to the mass market - Wipeout is niche and always will be, but it needs to be broadened to catch the eye of some hardcore fans who ignore it and also to try and catch the attention of the bulk of average gamers, and particularly racing fans.
Its tricky, because that appeal has to be there, yet we cant let down the hardcore fans who are, in reality maybe 5% of the overall players.

The point I am laboring to make is that the definition of an average gamer that I want to appeal to is different to what you see an average gamer as, and the reality is we need the game to appeal to more people and information.

We arent chasing buzz fans, we are after other hardcore racing fans and games players who maybe find the entry bar a little high, and it is especially compared to many games out there, and to be honest that is a flaw - Imagine spending £30 on a game for your son or buying it with your wages and getting frustrated due to the difficulty within the first 30mins - now thats not something you guys get with wipeout, because you know how to play it but its what happens to many.

So the entry bar needs lowering whilst the top end has to remain hard (which in Pulse it possibly doesnt remain hard enough)

Regarding Pulse being a little too easy at times - part of that was choice - make the campaign a little easier so more people see the game and stick with it, and then venture online where the REAL competition lies. The aim was to make the first 12 grids a challenge but doable for many, phantom is then more of a challenge (but perhaps should have been harder than it is) and the racebox hard races are actually harder than the 'hard race campaign races for the most part'.

So for people seeking more challenge racebox is useful, the grids themselves have an independant difficulty curve that means a hard race on grid 1 is easier than a hard race on grid 2 which is easier than a hard on grid 3 etc to give a progression feeling
Where as in racebox all hard races as equivalent to grid 12.

[lunar]

I might be a hopeless fanboy, but I think you`ve got it all as near to bang-on as possible with Pure and Pulse, given the considerations you described. I do know a lot of people who avoid Wipeout because they think it`s too hard, and you`ve got to address that. It`s been the case for me since I first got 2097 and started playing the game. I think it`s amazing and we`re very lucky in how much you cater to those of us with Wipeout OCD, and we`re keen enough that when we beat the game we`ll always find a way to make the game harder by competing with each other. Pulse gives us so many ways to do it that we can`t complain at all. You`ve given us a game mechanic that pleases 95% of the hardcore 95% of the time (can`t confirm the exact statistics) and we enjoy that mechanic and handling enough to go on and compete with each other in whatever way we like.

Wipeout games have never been difficult to complete. Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 were easy to finish (if you had the patience in the case of the second one), but they were difficult to look good at and difficult to enjoy at fast speeds, which means flying near-perfectly. Pulse isn`t so different to that.

[Dogg Thang]

the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion.

Wow. I am so surprised by that, especially given the huge buzz and acclaim of 2097 and the impressive marketing of WO3. Fusion seemed to just slip on to the shelves with average reviews and no buzz at all except for those hanging around the Fusion boards and even things there went a little sour when the Australian version came out.

That it did better with all of that is quite shocking and pretty much discounts any thoughts I had on what the appeal of the game is. My world has been shaken.

[QirexAAX]

I quite agree with you, lunar. Pure was the first wipeout I owned and while I was able to make fairly regular progress on it, I don't think at any point that I ever felt like I was getting any good at it.

I think Pulse's grid structure addresses that really nicely because it encourages you to do speed laps and zones and eliminators to help you develop the skills you need for races and tournaments, while at the same time often allowing you to pass them by if you're having trouble with them or are just not in the mood. If you find the grids too easy all you have to do is enough to unlock all the tracks and then stick to racebox and online.

As for time trial gold targets being too easy, I refer to what Colin was saying about the proportion of top wipeout players being members of this site. Even without the online racing, that encourages competition through posting times and videos and the like, so if you want a real Time Trial challenge there are always places like wipeoutzone and the rankings on wipeout-game to get it for those who are motivated enough to look. It then becomes irrelevant whether or not you've actually got a gold medal, but for the less ambitious player who plays wipeout because it looks cool and slick and has a good soudtrack etc., they might be pleased to be able to earn the easier golds after a few attempts and then to move on.

Pulse handles this well because it has considered its online community ahead of time. Unlike some game developers that just put up a posh flash site and then never seem to show any further interest the game, Pulse actually draws you in to its online community with the skin editor and the online rankings being made very obvious to the player from the off.

My point is that it seems the Pulse team were quite aware that people who really want a challenge (and a more dynamic one than you could get in most games, at that) are quite capable of tracking it down themselves, and ensured there was a suitable framework for them to do so.

[Frances_Penfold]

I want to thank Colin for taking the time to explain his perspective on issues related to difficulty, sales and the essence of Wipeout. It isn't often that ordinary gamers like myself get to read such a candid discussion, and I appreciate it

I am so surprised by that, especially given the huge buzz and acclaim of 2097 and the impressive marketing of WO3. Fusion seemed to just slip on to the shelves with average reviews and no buzz at all except for those hanging around the Fusion boards

It is surprising-- but I suppose if you add together the huge PS2 user base and the lack of competition (few futuristic racers on the current consoles at the time, F-zero not released yet), it makes sense.

[HISHO[JP]]

the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion.

Then, I don't know why fusion was not released in Japan.
Because of.... publisher(BAM Entertainment)?

WO64 was going to be released by "coconuts japan.inc" in Japan.
But after being delayed and delayed, the company was broken.
So WO64 was "lost" in Japan.


US version of Pulse is coming soon, but SCE Japan is still lying.

Shadow disappearing glitch should be fixed for photo mode.
Attachment 192
And count down effect....
Attachment 191

[Egg]

Heh. In fact, those are actually the sort of bugs (or issues) our Japanese testers would keep us up all night fixing. They're very strict compared to their slightly more ... er, forgiving, EU counterparts.

[Dogg Thang]

Dear lord. Wanting the game to be bug-free? God damn those Japanese slave drivers.

Sarcasm aside, I never thought the countdown thing was a bug. It's not needed in normal view because you can clearly see the sign.

[phl0w]

Thought so too, and I would actually prefer just the sign, because in RL as long as there's not some sort of countdown displayed via the ship's HUD, you'd have to keep an eye on the sign too.
The shadow bug didn't even occured to me, maybe because I only race in 1st person view. If it improves framerate, I say get rid of it as a whole.

[Egg]

Testers use a scale of priority - if something's not a deal-breaker (eg. shadows disappearing occasionally), it'll get put way down the list. The game will still get approved if there's a few low-priority issues, as long as they don't cause hangs or affect the experience.

Can't believe some people have such a bee in their bonnet about something so minor though

[rdmx]

Shadows were in 2097/xl, if they were in there, im sure pulse can manage shadows .
(Granted its no longer just a flat sprite painted on the ground)

[eLhabib]

Very interesting facts by Colin, I have to say. Never quite realised that there was such an enormous skill gap between the dedicated fans of the series and 'other' hardcore gamers. The task of making the game interesting for both ends of the spectrum sure is a difficult one.
However, there is one universal statement that I think always holds true: NOTHING makes a player lose interest in a game faster than the game being too easy. Just yesterday I tried out Burnout Paradise (the full game, not the demo), and while it was impressive to see the huge map with all the hidden paths and jumps, the spectacular crash physics and shiny graphics engine, I still got bored of the game after half an hour and I don't think I'll ever put it in my disk drive again. Why? Because it's so very easy. And I'm not talking about winning races or beating certain goals in the game - that can be hard, yes, but I'm talking about the very act of driving itself. Even though you start out with a crap car, you'll be instantly fully in control of the streets, drift like a pro and dodge oncoming traffic like it's no big deal. In real life I'd be dead within a minute. Now I'm not saying it should be anywhere as hard and unforgiving as reality, but there has to be SOME learning curve.
If a game is rewarding and fun, appealing to both eyes and ears, and provides a thrill for the brief moment you are doing everything well, then it doesn't matter if it's really hard and requires some getting used to. It's like surfing, really - it's incredibly tough to get good at it, and you'll drink a lot more seawater than you like, but those first 3 seconds you ever managed to stand on your board and ride a relatively tiny wave are so full of adrenaline that they will keep you going forever, swallowing tons of seawater in failed attempts again, just to replicate that perfect moment on the wave again sometime.
Now, I know that's hard to translate into a futuristic racing game, but at least we can rest assured that the visual and aural perfection are there to provide a rush, and the speed has never been an issue. But maybe having different speed classes (and now enemy difficulty settings) isn't enough to make it beginner-friendly. After all, the handling itself is what most beginners are struggling with, even at venom speeds. They get frustrated because they bump into walls in the turns, and even on the straights, where they manage to keep the craft straight, they don't really get a rush because it's only venom, and that's not fast compared to other racing games out there. So they are effectively missing out on that 'surfer moment' I was talking about. Maybe the focus should be on making it possible for beginners to enjoy blazingly high speeds right from the beginning, utilising some kind of driving aids to keep them from crashing constantly.
Look at the Forza Motorsport series, for example. Even my mother can drive the fastest car in the game around the Nürburgring without severe crashes and have a good time, as long as all the driving aids are turned on. But if I take away the ABS, TCS, STM, Automatic Tranny, and the Ideal Line display, there is now way she would even manage to get past the first 2 turns.
Now I don't know if something like that would work for wipEout, but if there were driving aids that would enable a player new to the series to instantly enjoy phantom speeds - knowing that he is far from good at the game, but still already getting the rush - that would open the game up to everyone IMO.
Our kind, of course, would never touch any of these driving aids - just as a Forza pro played the game without any aids from day one.

[Dogg Thang]

Can't believe some people have such a bee in their bonnet about something so minor though

Yes, it is minor. I guess it wouldn't matter if it was the only one. The ambient sound problem is bigger. Forgetting you're using a custom skin after sleep mode, minor again. Incorrect counting in Eliminator mode, yep, another minor one. All pretty noticable though.