10 things i hate about wipeout fusion

[tyltyI]

Just my 2 cents.

- Bugs: it's f***ing annoying to always fly outside the track
- Soundtrack: not a single music I like, no style. Should have been a mix of W2097 and W3
- Hit detection: I hate to spin around 180° and then stop when I just brush one of those barrier posts
- Stupid ship design. Feisar is always good, maybe just a bit too short. Van Uber is ridiculous, Auricom the same, Tigron looks like a torpedo, Xios is a weird box. They don't look cool anymore. I thought in the future they had cool and streamlined ships with wings, but no.
- No "spirit": WoF lost all the spirit of the series. It just doesn't look cool, menus are ugly, music menu is dull, and the pilot faces are too stupid. I thought that (like the ships) Wipeout pilots looked cool, not superdeformed comic characters Comeon, Roberto Sergio looks nice but probably is good for another game. I want realistic faces, not these
Wipeout 2097 was flashy and cool with pumped soundtrack, Wip3out was somewhat more "sad" with dull colors and weird tracks like Xpander. Fusion is...what? Somewhat comic? Not an understandable style IMHO.
- Ship upgrades: whats the point of upgrading the ships? The CPU gets better in proportion, so nothing really changes, but still Wipeout has always been about pro and cons. I don't want to upgrade the ships, that's why I still have all the money and the ships are still the same as default. And also as I said it's no more about pro and cons, compare the stats from Feisar and Piranha...that makes all unbalanced
- Stupid challenges: survival challenges are so stupid and easy that make me sad, and I wonder why they put them in
- Bad variety of circuits: I wish there were more circuits, maybe from older episodes and less variations of them, too many alternatives of the same tracks.
- Too many weapons: I liked Wip3out because of the strange idea of making very few attacking weapons. IMHO it made the game less of a war and more difficult to catch the opponents. In WoF there are many stupid weapons, too many...and useless. Flamethrower? Protonic cannon? Supermissles? Biotrap? Bah....
Weapons like the gravstinger and gravity bomb (as someone else said) just ruin the game and the feeling of speed.
- No choice of class: many leagues, difficult raises, but classes were better IMHO.
- No checkpoints: less thrill, less adrenalin pump
- Too easy: I beat the game so easily, compared to how much time it took me to beat 2097 and W3.

[Bob Todd]

Does anyone else think it's silly that Tigron's logo is a flame and their slogan is 'Burn, Baby, Burn', but their super-weapon is an icy thing?

[infoxicated]

I don't really think Rob Francis was going for consistancy, Anna - I think he was just going for as many weapons as he could possibly get in the game!

Although, to be honest, I hadn't really spotted that one before. I guess there must be lots of howlers in there.

[Essell]

every single change in wipeout fusion was for the worse, and went completely against the very concepts that set wipeout a league above the rest.

it turned into yet another generically designed bog standard shitty f-zero pod racer clone. the racing isn't nearly as technical with the stupid wide tracks, the ships no longer steer but slide, the stylisation and graphic design is bloody awful, half the music is lifeless and dull, the in game menu systems are badly designed beyond belief [unreadable text, only being able to see one option at a time]...

i could go on. wipeout fusion is a bloody disgrace to the name.

[...and hi everyone, i haven't been here for ages i just rebought fusion to give it another go, and ended up just as riled up about it as last time...]

[gucci_little_piggy]

fusion has soooo many faults

the bugs are really bad
no qualifying
no race classes(!)
no AG sys
all the ships are crap
some of the weapons are stupidly powerful (like the green cloud thing or the gravity bomb)
you stop too much
steering is wierd
its not cool anymore, its "funny"
but the biggest thing i think is speed. all the other games were really fast and rough. you had such a massive sense of speed and you could really feel your brain working. fusion lacks this insane feeling which to me is the integeral part of wipeout racing. i think fusion was a blip.

[Dogg Thang]

Okay I agree with most people's complaints about Fusion here as I think it was a bit of a disaster in many ways but I'm going to butt in here to stick up for one of the things complained about - lack of checkpoints.

Checkpoints are possibly one of the most contrived 'gameplay' obstacles ever conceived in racing games. Their origins are easily traced to the arcade where they were a convenient way of making sure that people didn't stay all day on their 10c or whatever it cost at the time. That is not something which should affect a console racer. No, checkpoints were introduced in Wipeout 2097 (XL) because of one major flaw in the game (I know everyone loves it and I do too but hear me out) - The AI in WOXL does not in any way act like other racers. The other craft simply zoom up to their relative positions and slow down to make sure that they are well spaced during the race. This was apparently because some people complained about being alone on the track for a lot of the original Wipeout. Whatever the reason, the result was that your opponents do not in any way feel like opponents. In fact they are like checkpoints themselves. I'm sure, like me, most people who play it will know whether they have a chance of winning the race depending on what position they are in on a particular lap.

That is not like real racing. So effectively WOXL became a time trial game with enemy craft as obstacles rather than opponents. The reslut of this is that the race felt like one large challenge (to get first) rather than a series of smaller ones (overtaking and constant jostling for position in GT for example). So the devs needed to introduce smaller goals to break it up - and the Wipeout checkpoints were born.

A contrived solution to a gameplay flaw in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I love XL and like the time trial feel especially over the Fusion fight thing but I don't think checkpoints really added anything. They simply made learning tracks at the beginning a bit of a trial and error memory test. Rather than trying to get better at a particular track, you had to learn the next section of track.

Besides, where's the logic? Why doesn't every craft behind you who couldn't have made the checkpoint get booted off?

Dogg.

[infoxicated]

I agree with you 100% Dogg Thang - checkpoints are the lame 1980's racing game method of making people spend more money. They have no place on a console game.

I feel that in Wipeout 3 they simply made the game frustrating when you were a novice, and when you got even half decent they became irrelevant. Wasted code, I'm afraid... although it was a nifty sound effect when you cross them.

[FoxZero]

good point dogg about checkpoints.i have noticed the ai in all 3 games has acted just like that too, speed up until designated points, then travel at position-relative speeds.

[lunar]

Checkpoints are irrelevant once you learn the course, but they could have had a useful purpose in wipeout 3 and fusion, and could yet in the next Wipeout, if you had to actually pass through the checkpoint beam, and if the computer remembered whether you had done so. This could stop people finding glitch shortcuts and respawns. You wouldn`t have to be timed through the checkpoints, you would just have to go through them in the right order, so, for example, if you come to cp10 having missed cp9, you`ve shortcutted and its ..... contender disqualified. If the checkpoints were put in the right places on the track, this sort of system could easily stop shortcutting and respawn cheats.

[Lance]

.
very good point
.

[science]

checkpoints potentially have a place in racing games. there is no need for them to end the game if you dont make them in time (for the reasons mentioned above), but if they functioned more like racing sims' checkpoints do (ie, gave you in seconds how far ahead or behind first place you are, and maybe even how far off from your best time you are) it would be pretty cool. it would probably be best to include an option to turn it off though, as some people would just see it as an onscreen distraction. as much as i like to see that I've made a perfect lap, sometimes i wish it would come up for a split second and then just go the hell away. I can imagine checkpoint times being the same way.

[Lance]

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i've too often crashed when the perfect lap text came on screen. luckily it doesn't show up very often
.

[Unsortient]

So is the wip3out SE soundtrack different than the regular wip3out soundtrack? I liked about 2 tracks on that one. While on the XL ost i liked pretty much everything. The Euro saturn version had alot of tracks from cold storage that were pretty decent. The saturn version of wipeout 2097 is actually very good and actually leaves the craft on the stage after it blows up. (The carcas of it.) I couldnt really get into the n64 version for some reason. It was a bit off. You know what i mean?

I havent posted here in a long time but this is the only western game i actually like besides worms. Usually i only play japanese games. I would say wipeout and ridge racer are the only reasons to own a ps2 in my book.

p.s. has anyone heard of Mijk Van Dijk in here?

[Asayyeah]

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i've too often crashed when the perfect lap text came on screen. luckily it doesn't show up very often
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Very true Lance. The worst track to have PL text in front of your eyes is Valparaiso and Odessa Keys on XL, for me...

So is the wip3out SE soundtrack different than the regular wip3out soundtrack?

I am quite sure it's the same soundtracks ( it's not a long time i ve own SE)
About Mijk Van Dijk i am not sure, i know Paul Van Dyk a very nice DJ; probably not the same one...

[RJ O'Connell]

Revised List of things I hate about Wipeout Fusion:

1: The most obvious and widely hated flaw, the downforcey handling.
2: It certainly doesn't feel as fast as the original trilogy at any level except Phanto - oh, wait...
3: The deletion of speed classes in favour of a trend-riding upgrade system.
4: Re-tooling of the mines so that they can be dropped one at a time instead of five simultaneously, which is just silly.
5: The gravity bomb bug, which, if you're in range and ahead of the ship that dropped it, you can fly through the entire level and need to be re-spawned.
6: The uselessness of Devilia's point-to-point races.
7: The imbalance of ship performance in this game is only rivaled by Wipeout Pure, and even Pure has more balance. The fact that we've had to go into the game's files to find REAL ship performance tells you how busted that system is.
8: G-Tech Systems sucks ass through a straw. I dare you to tell me otherwise. And, it's a plug for Good Technology, no more, no less.
9: Dropping through the track at times when going over Katmoda's flip pads.
10: Graphically, the original trilogy was so far ahead of its time. Even better than the Final Fantasy PS1 games. This game...not so much. It's fluid, but not as visually stunning as a Wip3out.

[vh5150]

All this information about the good and bad things about Wipeout Fusion should be handed over to the moderator that runs this forum that works for Sony.

Tell them that they bastardized a good genre of futuristic racing and now they have a way to repair that in (if any) the next installment of Wipeout.

Could there ever be a way to tell Studio Liverpool that our voice matters?

[infoxicated]

They have a very strong idea of what was wrong with Wipeout Fusion, as well as a few of the things that were good about it. They might have strayed from the path with that one, but they still know the way to make a good Wipeout game for future reference.

[G'Kyl]

I am quite sure it's the same soundtracks ( it's not a long time i ve own SE)
About Mijk Van Dijk i am not sure, i know Paul Van Dyk a very nice DJ; probably not the same one...

Yep, Soundtracks are exactely the same, I got both versions here.

And no, Paul and Mike have got nothing to do with each other, except for the name of course. The latter actually emphasizes on that his last name is pronounced somewhat differently than Paul's. A friend of mine once did interviews with both of them. Anyway, that's about all I know. I'm not into their kind of music.

Ben

[Rapier Racer]

Yes fusion has many faults, steering slightly away from that and to the website I do not like the way in whitch they killed off half the teams, take Icaras for example the fastest team on WO 3 and what was it's demise, oh the man that started it swallowed a balloon at a kids party! AG Systems apparantely swallowed up by G-Tech, what? where's the proof of that? G-Techs stats are all the exact opposite of AG's you think they would have adopted some of the teams characteristics like the crafts handling. Also I WANT MY ASSEGAI. As someone said earlier they turned Wipeout into a joke, have you read the info for the eg-r pilots?

I guess there must be lots of howlers in there.

Yes have you noticed the Van-Uber team slogan? = 'Rest In Pieces' were they talking about thier own ships cos they normally do.

[DJ Techno]

The only thing I had problems with the game is.

Playing Vohl Square forward and reverse track 2.
I would leap from track to track toward the fninsh line.

I would hit the ramp, fly into the air, and then get stuck at hundreds to thousands of feet in the air and begin to fly around. Until Im either brought back down by a rescue ship or
I figure the way on my own. Crash and Burn