As requested, the weapon review is next! 8 )

WEAPONS - Open up a can of whoopass

This is the first WO where spending time in SR can teach you the track better than spending it in TT. The reason for this being that in TT, there are no weapon pads. Knowing where the speed pads are will definitely help you go fast (knowing when to take them and when to avoid them is another topic entirely, I'll get into that below) but you're going to need to hit weapon pads if you want to stay alive! There's no pitlane, so when you lose shield energy (which you're going to do whether it's enemy weapon fire or barrel rolls draining it) you have to hit the weapon pads and absorb. This is a fantastic mechanic added to the game, pun totally intended.
I'm fairly certain that weapons are all the same when absorbed, but they're definitely all different when used. Well, mostly different anyway.
One definite issue with all offensive weapons though is "weapon effect". The level of "realism" they're going for in WOPure is very high, gravity effects and mass/inertia effects and thrust and the list goes on. Generally, the game does quite well in the "simulation" area. Nowhere near an actual simulator of course (not the experience being aimed for anyway, so hardly a realistic expectation) but the world presented in-game tries to be consistent. The effect of weapons on your craft is a gaping hole in this simulation. If you get hit from behind with a Missile (or Rockets, or Quake, or VorpalBunny) the absolute LAST direction it should throw you is backwards in the direction of the attack. But this is quite often what happens. The reason for this is, I'm sure, that they don't want you getting a speed boost when you get shot, you're supposed to slow down when you get shot. That's one of the core concepts of the game, and I can certainly see why they wouldn't want to mess with that. Still, a more imporant feature of the game is "going stupid fast", and being brought to a standstill twice a lap is, in my opinion, a much worse violation of the core concept. What's the solution here? Well, I think it would be great if getting hit by a weapon did give you a shove in the incoming direction. This would mean that getting hit from behind by a Missile would give you a slight shove forward. This would also mean that if you drove over a bunch of Mines each one would shove you backwards and up a small amount, perhaps enough up that you'd clear the last one or two in the set. Landing on top of a bomb might give you enough air to do a barrel roll! I could be wrong, but I think that would be totally awesome. Of course, we're still left with the whole "you just got hit, the last thing you get from that is a speed boost" problem, and I think we can solve that by making the shield on the ship go wonky for a bit and the thrusters on your ship cut out until the whole AG field stabilizes. So small amounts of damage (which would give you a very gentle push in the impacting direction, likely not even changing the vector for a heavier ship) would cut out your thrust for just a moment, and heavy damage like Quake or Plasma could cut out your thrust for perhaps a whole second. Maybe two. But that would probably be too long. This could be a general effect, any time you take shield damage your thrust cuts out, or even just lessens for very small amounts of damage. Without the acceleration, air friction will slow you down, and overall you lose speed. I think I would call that an awesome implementation of weapon damage. What we get with Pure... well, it really needs work. The best feture of TT mode is that you don't have to worry about weapon damage effects anymore, and that's quite telling.

Track Garbage - Mines & Bombs
Mines stick around for 5 seconds, Bombs stick around until destroyed. Mines are small and come in a pack of 5, Bombs are large and singular. Excellent implementation on these weapons, including the small "detection radius" they have. You don't have to hit them, a mere sideswipe will set them off. If you're not in front, you have to learn how to dodge these. If you are in front, you have to learn how to best deploy these. These defensive weapons are going to be the bulk of what you'll have to handle in a race, get used to them.

Protection - Shield & Autopilot
The shield is another very well implemented weapon. Not only does it look cool when deployed, it looks even better if you're absorbing while you've got a shield up. Also, the Shield doesn't always last the same amount of time! If you hit (or get hit by) some serious weaponry (usually the previously mentioned Mines & Bombs, but a Plasma can easily do it too) it can blow your Shield out early! Very nice addition to this classic weapon.
Autopilot is, unfortunately, a bit of a disappointment. Sometimes it'll drive you into a wall, or take you off-track, the only way you can be sure that it won't fly worse than you is if you use it on a straight. And what's the point in that? No longer will Autopilot always save you from a crash (probably a good change, WO3 Autopilot would take you through buildings if that was what was required to prevent a crash, amazingly useful but not very realistic) but sometimes the Autopilot can fly a section of track (chicane, I'm talking to you!) faster than you'd believe possible. This would be a better weapon if it was more reliable, as it is it's probably best to absorb unless you know for sure that the upcoming section can be properly handled by an Autopilot when you're travelling at this speed with this entry angle.

Unguided Offense - Rockets & Plasma & Disruption Bolt
Rockets are back to being the great 3 rocket spread attack, Plasma is still the devestating charge-up weapon. Nothing's new or changed here, but can you improve on greatness like this?
The return of the Disruption Bolt is not such a happy story however.
It sounds like such a nifty idea "Let's have a weapon with random effects! You won't know what it'll do till you get hit by it!". In practice, that randomness is a good part of what makes it so awful. Like much of what we saw in Fusion, it sounds really cool, but it plays really bad. Part of the problem is the inconsistent levels of effect. Perhaps it'll give you an autopilot through a tough section and you'll be glad you got hit by it. Or maybe it'll just disable your airbrakes and have little discernible effect. Or perhaps it'll reverse your controls and you'll go straight into the wall and from 1st place to 8th. By the time you've realized what's happened, it's too late. Likely the greatest improvement from Pure to Pulse is that we won't see this weapon again. The bright spot here is that since this mistake has now been made, we shouldn't see weapons with random effects happen again. Ever.

Guided Offense - Missile & Quake
The lock-on Missile can't be fired backwards easily (a shame, always loved that WOXL feature!), but we've all heard how if you just do a quick 180'...
These weapons do have a problem though, and it's a problem shared by all "fired" weapons in the game. The speed they travel at. If you're going really fast when you fire your Quake, you're going to keep up with it. This is not good! I'm of the firm belief that all weaponry, when fired, should have a speed which is the speed it was fired at plus a constant value, or perhaps an acceleration value. Either way, you'd have a much faster Quake/Missile/whatever when you need it to be faster. Of course, that might seem to make them a bit too strong. A faster missile is harder to dodge, right? And a faster Quake can't be outrun. A faster missile should have a tougher time following the curves in the track, so a slow missile should be able to track its target around a corner, and a fast missile should explode against the wall. Also, as it is you can't dodge a Quake except by tracking out and getting teleported behind the Quake. That also seems a little extreme. If I'm high enough in the air, a Quake shouldn't hurt me if it passes under me while I have enough altitude. And higher altitude should somewhat reduce the damage you take. Perhaps you aren't high enough to avoid it entirely, but you're only being whacked by the top part of the quake, not the whole length of it. So a slightly different implementation of fired weapons would, I believe, but a definite improvement in many ways.

Speed - Turbo
A classic pickup, but not as good as it should've been. For one thing, turbos don't play well with boosts. Hit the turbo, then hit a boost pad, and you'll actually slow down. I'd call that a fairly serious bug, myself. It means that if you're going for the best time possible, you have to hit all the boost pads you can, but not hit boost pads while you're turboed. Counter-intuitive. Also, using the turbo is likely going to make you fly. This is good, flying is a part of WO, we're not stuck to the track if we don't want to be. Unfortunately, there's this magical unmarked zone called "on track" and if we ever cross this boundary line we get teleported back to before we used our turbo and the dream of flight dies a horrible death. Not very nice.
So the turbo itself is just as good as it always was, but the game doesn't seem well designed for its use. As such, instead of being "the ultimate speed tool", it's more of a "recover from crippling stall-outs tool". Which isn't really what turbo is supposed to be for.

And again, that's enough typing for a little while. More to come later!

You know, if your eyes haven't turned into squares from reading reams of my pixellated text... 8 )