SL redundancies and the future [if any] of HD

[Koleax]

You know as well as I do, there's nothing wrong with the game.
It's just that it takes practice, and lots of it, to get good at it.
It would seem the populations of some countries are less likely to put the effort in than others.

I don't agree with this. If you like a game, you generally play a lot of it and thus become well-practiced, not the other way around.

But there is something to be said about a level of difficulty that makes one feel "welcomed." I mean, there's been an amount of elitism in Wipeout design going back to the beginning. Somewhere along the line, beginning with Wip3out, the difficulty change caused the coolness factor to move away from the chill welcoming sort to the select elite sort. (I could say something about various European countries and elitism here but will instead only remind you that I could have).

Then again I'm not sure why that's the reason more people don't play it, at least here in America. When people ask me what games I play and I say Wipeout, even the most casual of gamers have heard of it, but follow it up by saying that I'm the only one they know who plays it.

Perhaps it takes an unusually focused sort of gamer. There's no narrative, even in the most abstract "career mode" of the sort you'd find in Forza. There are no characters to build, inventory to manage, or equipment to juggle, so that completely leaves out any gamer with an RPG inclination. There's no exploration. At all. Of anything. No sense of discovery. (No, new barrel rolls don't count). There's no sandbox element, which completely leaves out anyone who just wants to "play around." At the same time, it doesn't really go anywhere. I could see that particular combination not attracting many players.

At least in 2097, you eventually unlocked Piranha, the coolest-looking peaceful maxed-out badass ever. There's nothing like that summum bonum in any other Wipeout. Fusion makes a good attempt with the ultimate weapons. The richness and variety of weapons in Fusion is really under-appreciated. Every time I see a Piranha with weapons, though, I feel like something died inside.

In any case you have to be a bit laser-focused to play Wipeout. The most important thing about the game, though, and why I love it, is the feeling that the world within Wipeout is opened up to technology, made better, cleaner, more elegant, more stable, richer, and even more natural. The feeling that you could spread your arms and fly through this wonderful landscape as fast as you can and destroy anyone who got in your way. That's what I think the spirit of Wipeout really is and will keep the series alive.