10 Things I hate about WipEout Pulse

[Roadster]

I'm a bit of a Wipeout noob, but I loved Pure so this was always going to be a definite purchase. There are just a few niggles, though:

1. I'm still not sure about the idea of having Black and White runs, it makes each of the tracks lose their individuality a bit. In fact, I would much rather that SL had just concentrated on twelve tracks, picking only the best version of each track. Especially since we'll be getting more tracks through downloads anyway.

2. The Race Campaign is a good idea, but it could have been implemented better. Forcing players to play in modes they may not like, in order to unlock more events, is not good game design in my opinion. Even worse is the way the speed classes have been spread out - I'm only on Grid 7, but I hate having to play a Venom event after, for example, just completing a race on Rapier. Each grid should have stuck to a single speed class, obviously increasing as you go further into the campaign.

3. Choosing the difficulty of AI. I understand this is to help novice players, but it means that almost all of the single race gold medals will be ridiculously easy to get (on Easy). It would have been better if there was a system where you get more points by completing a race on Hard, which gives you more of an incentive as it allows you to unlock more grids (and tracks) quicker.

4. The bugs and glitches. Hasn't been a major issue for me, admittedly (I've had that HUD glitch once, and the game's crashed on me a couple of times), but still, Pure had a few of these too and I'm disappointed that the sequel isn't more polished like I expected it to be.

5. The menu is nowhere near as slick as the one in Pure. In fact, it's all a bit bland and generic now, and there's really no need for scrolling statistics and useless tips on the loading screen - reminds me of EA games. Having said that, it does function pretty much perfectly, and the reference manual was a great inclusion.

6. Photo mode is not as flexible as it could have been. You should be able to move the camera and zoom in/out on all the view modes. not just one or two.

7. Um... the voice on the intros is annoying.

Really struggling to think of anything else. Frame rate is not an issue when playing in 333mhz, it's mostly smooth as silk then, and loading times have also been improved. It's a superb game, they seem to have thought of pretty much everything for the sequel.