10 Things I hate about WipEout Pulse

[Quakka]

As a bona fide newcomer to the series, I'm finding the learning curve pretty smooth so far. I'm currently at grid 5, and I've had the game for 5 days. Single races and head to head on hard AI are just about the right amount of challenge. It depends on the track a bit, on some (Arc Prime ) I can't see myself winning without a ridiculous amount of luck with the item pickups.

The time trials and speed laps do feel a bit too forgiving, though. I usually land at least bronze on my first lap, and even gold seems to allow for stupid mistakes. When I do a run I myself consider good, I usually pass the gold limit by over a second.

While the easy golds are a bit dissapointing, I do appreciate that they let me progress with the unlocks. Getting stuck on an early grid because of some arbitrary time limits would definitely piss me off more than a slight lack of challenge. Anyway, since the game allows me to build custom grids with any target times, I'm planning to do that after I get the unlocks done. It seems like a really fun way to work on my lap times.

[Alucioj]

Obviously inspired by this thread.
Don't get me wrong, I like Pulse, bot nonetheless there are a few things that really get on my nerves. Let's share our thoughts about that.


01.
Just Single Race and Tournament in Multiplayer mode. I really miss eliminator here. At least modes like Head-to-Head would have been possible because there are no weapons that may not target because of lag.

02.
Hard AI is good - but why has it to be more aggressive than Fusion's? The race feels like a battlefield. Very often no fun and very frustrating. I know there's also Medium and Easy, but I want an AI that is hard to beat because of the racing, not because I'm fired by everyone.

03.
Some tracks really are no fun. Yes, they are simply no fun. They are not like "oh I hate that track because of that and that but I like in some way". I mean that they are really no fun. And yes I'm talking about Outpost 7 here, too. Everyone who knows how much I loved Citta Nuova should think I love Outpost 7 as well. But I don't. The whole track seems like a mess to me. Maybe I'll change my opinion about that in future, but all the races I had so far were simply no fun at all.

04.
The freezing. You take a screenshot in photomode and suddenly the game freezes. Same for online play. I had that so often now that I really think twice about using the photomode or pressing buttons too fast.

05.
You can't see which races a tournament contains. You just see the number of tracks and that's it.

06.
Just 5 skins savable. Seems to be the same for custom grids. Why?

07.
The leech beam. God I hate it. Well, at least the way it's been done. I like the energy drain thing, but the effect it has to you ship is just awful. When there's somebody who already gets my energy, why the hell has my ship to go uncontrollable left and right as well?

08.
The menu design. I don't hate it, but Pure's menus just seemed so... pure. I miss the minimalism in the menus and sometimes it seems like there were some bitmaps thrown together rather than being concerted.

09.
Sometimes the Magstrip feature seems to be overloaded. I can't agree with most people who say that the feature is used wisely in all cases. I don't mean the number of the Magstrip sections, I mean the parts of the track where they are used. There were plenty of sections where barrel rolling is impossible because of the Magstrip feature. I don't say I don't want it in general, but at least at some sections I think "why?".

10.
It is still not possible to barrel roll if there are too many contenders on the screen. Lame.


Surely, if there's going to be one thread that lists all the positives sides of Pulse I will have no problem to list more than just ten.
But as much as I enjoy Pulse and it's refining (woho - no roof grinding anymore!) I'm not quite sure yet if I like the game more than Pure. The game is fun, sure. But there are these things (I did not list all here) that make me unsure if I should like the game more than Pure or not.
I guess it will take a few months till I can finally say which game I like more. But that's my point of view for now.

1. I agree, I wish theyd add Eliminator, having played Eliminator in the Grid setup Ive really enjoyed it and its one of my favourite events now. Maybe they will add it in time?

2. Yes again I agree, Rapier for a relative newbie like me is a shoot em up fest. Ive so far managed a silver in a Rapier race on hard, an achievement Im proud of specially since I use the Piranha but im not going to lie my flying style is similar to that of a pinball wizard game and Im constantly absorbing anything I pick up so I dont explode; Its certainly going to take me a while to adapt to the Rapier speed and im thinking the more familiar with courses I become the easier itll be but Im going to try alternating between the Piranha and the AG Systems to see if better handling helps.

3. Everyone is going to have their preferences and their hates track wise, Ive already started to enjoy some and not others just how it is.

4. Yep I suffered the freezing a few times online and once during normal CPU play and its frustrating as hell. It doesnt happen often enough to be a major issue for me and the normal game mode vs CPU was because I pressed buttons too quickly. Online Ive regularly posted my issues with the server on these forum pages but I think this is normal with online games?!

5. Yes again it would be handier to see which races are in a specific tournament because then you could practise a track you arent as skillfull on beforehand.

6. As someone else posted Im guessing the trade off between load times and online capablities?! And obviously how much space the site is willing to allow to us users.

7. Hehe I dont see this as an issue, its a feature of the game and we have to deal with it. What kind of game would it be if every weapon has a beneficial effect.

8. The menu design doesnt bother me so much, I never played Pure so maybe your argument is valid but I find navigation easy enough.

9. Thats just design issues I guess but Im overall happy with the layout of tracks and you cant please everyone.

10. Yep that is very annoying as its a skill I use lots

Overall Id say Wipeout Pulse is an amazing game for me. I am new to the PSP nevermind the Wipeout game on the PSP. I did have WO2097 but that was years ago and my skills have degraded it appears.

None of my PSP games are without flaws; for example in PES6 the player sprites cut up like player heads seem blocky and almost see through which annoys me, as well as WOPulse I have Sega Rally, FM2008 & Pro Evolution Soccer 6 but for me gameplay is the most important aspect of any videogame and all my games, WOPulse included, have this.

Yes there are issues but I dont know any videogame that doesnt have some sort of issues however if the overall enjoyment factor of the game is on point then you have a winner in my view and Wipeout Pulse certainly wins for me.

[Rapier Racer]

Maybe the bomb could be sorted for HD as the current idea of this weapon is horse ****. It was decided that making it time out and explode after a fixed amount of time was a fabulous idea, I suppose I agree Pure got a little bomb clustered here and there. However, what you, SL, have actually done is nothing but punish faster players and give a big advantage to slower ones. If your going to implement a system like this then do it properly and make the bomb time out faster or don't have that in the game at all, its not fair that a bomb from the previous lap which should no longer be there explodes in my face or requires me to take extreme evasive action only for it to blow up just as I've passed it and make life much much easier for the guy behind. I was racing someone I think it was Ash Omen, he deserved to win the race after nearly 5 laps of kicking my ass on Arc Prime black, but he was robbed by a bomb on the bridge which blew his ship off the side, probably left by some slower ship on the previous lap, which allowed me to take a cheap victory, he was pissed, and so would I be, and have been.

I think a better idea would be to do away with this time out crap and just have it so the bomb can hurt the ship that dropped it, that way if no one hits it then it remains for the next lap and the person who set it will have to try and avoid it just like everyone else.

[Frances_Penfold]

Hey Rapier, I could be wrong about this, but I thought bombs and mines CAN hurt the dropper in Wipeout Pulse?

[Dogg Thang]

They can but they have a limited life span now.

[QirexAAX]

This is just a totally irrelevant point but, one thing that I really hate about Pulse is this - I've just been racing on Talon's Junction and, well, I live very near to the Brecon Beacons and have been there many times and they're nowhere near as mountainous as the backdrops of Talon's Junction, I think I just saw Mont Blanc in the distance...

[Asayyeah]

They can but they have a limited life span now.

Yes you right Dogg.
Unfortunately not enough limited on one particular case if you respawn ( tech de ra )after throwing mines or a bomb you can be hit by them : subito presto the double charge ( respawn + weapons effect )

[Rapier Racer]

Yeah I know the bomb can hurt the ship that drops it, happens to me often when I drop a bomb right in the face of the following ship. What I mean is lets just have that system in place, where a bomb I left on the previous lap will explode if I touch it the following lap and not the time out, unless the time it takes for the bomb to explode is reduced a lot. Also before someone decides to tell me that this happened in Pure all the time, not the same since bombs did not self destruct.

[Frances_Penfold]

Ah, I see what you are saying, Rapier

My vote has always been for making the bombs long-lasting or permanent-- my guess is that SL determined that it tended to make the tracks become too littered (as you mention in your original post about the bomb issue in Pulse).

[zargz]

Something that sucks is that on the Player Info screen online you can only see the right side of the ship.
as I see it there are three ways to see the custom skins:
1. online/ingame, which is the worse quality.
2. in the player info screen, which is the 2nd best
3. in a community like this or send a file to your friends - best quality.

I'm guessing most of the people use 1 and 2.

A selfrotating ship like in the save screen in the skineditor
or being able to rotate it your self with the nub would have been nice.

[QirexAAX]

I think I just saw Mont Blanc in the distance...

Having said that, on closer inspection it looks rather a lot like Mount Snowdon.

A shoddy photoshop of mount Snowdon:



And how the Talon's Junction mountain actually looks.

Snowdon is over 100 miles away from the Brecon Beacons... but it IS in Wales.

[infoxicated]

It could be, of course, that Clarko - who wrote the track intro text - set it in Wales because he has has family who live there, but the artist who worked on the track was either not familiar with Wales or was not aware of the content of the intro audio whilst working on the scene.

Good effort on the picture, though!

[QirexAAX]

Very well, I can accept that. Now I'm free to get on with the rest of my life.

[tapioca]

As said before, the online section of Pulse lacks a few features.
One more thing i'd like to see is the display of every running game on the "join game" screen.
They could be grayed out with a few information such as remaining races for tournament games, so that we can decide to wait for a game to end or just join one already available.

I guess that would also give the feeling that there are many games running, because most of the time it looks quite empty, what is probably disappointing for newbies at least. The number of games is displayed on the country/language screen but it's not as user-friendly.

[Nadia Elenova]

The ten places are for... OUTPOST 7! I hate this track, I hate it.

[Rapier Racer]

lol, the black run is dire I agree, white it okish, taking away most of the speed pads on the u-turn was a bullshit idea whoever came up with it.

[BARTgai]

yeah, unlockd outpost 7 black a few days ago. i almost started tearing my hair out.

[Triple Lei]

One more thing I find a bit annoying in Pulse, especially because it's such a fast game:
The animation when you've picked up a weapon/item. It's not the animation itself, it's the time the animation takes till it really shows you the weapon.

When you're racing and you're in a fight or you need energy, you directly have to know which weapon/item you've picked up to make a fast decision. But to decide you need to know which weapon/item you've picked up and it needs too much time till you know it (even though it's already just a short moment) because of the animation.
I would get rid of the animation completely. No popping in, no drop-down, nothing. You fly over the pad and you can directly see what you've picked up. Just like in all WOs before Pure.

It's really an important element where functionality is over eye-candy.


Yes, Colin, that's a hint for WOHD

I just read through all 30 pages of this thread and this issue is really the only thing I'm worried about. From the one YouTube vid I saw, it looks like I can't even distinguish by color, forcing me to wait a whole second!

Hopefully it's not still in the North American version...

[zargz]

yeh, that might be a good reason for buying the NA disk.

[Au_Xtr3me]

Hopefully a patch for SL could remove the weapon pad animation