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After the excellence that was the N64 incarnation of Ridge Racer, I have to confess that this game was high on my list of DS games to play.
The game itself is a direct port of the N64 version, handled by NST once again and doesn’t seem to be any different at all, bar losing analogue control and the excellent graphics present in Ridge Racer 64 (or am I just wearing rose tinted spectacles?). The graphics aren’t bad on RRDS and the game certainly hammers along at a great frame-rate. Comments that it looks like a PSOne game are greatly exaggerated. Seeing the game in motion, with various motion blur effectives and reflective lighting in place will soon show the games N64 heritage.
The control seems very twitchy. It would appear the NST have tried to recreate analogue control on the D-pad and it isn’t 100% successful. It can certainly be used and when combined with power-sliding feels natural enough, but over that initial period of getting used to the game, RRDS seems very difficult to handle.
Then again you could just use the touch screen for a bit thumb strap steering. Wisely, NST have labelled this mode as expert mode, because it’s a nightmare to use. The touch screen isn’t well suited to a controlling mechanism in a driving game and Ridge Racer really exposes this.
The courses are nicely designed and taken from the first two Ridge Racer games as well as the new course NST added to the N64 version. Veterans of the series should recognise the courses immediately and it shouldn’t be too long before they’re whizzing around them. As long as they can get used to the controls that is.
Unlike Ridge Racers on the PSP, RRDS includes brilliant single cart WiFi gameplay. Even if none of your friends own the game they can join in wireless multiplayer games for up to six players. When playing wirelessly we experienced nothing to indicate we were doing so, with the game running just as smoothly as in the single player modes.
And so there you have it. Ridge Racer DS looks set to be a fairly accurate port of the N64 original, including the same 9 tracks as before and the same car set. Whilst this isn’t as graphically impressive as the PSP Ridge Racers, it certainly matches its speed and should still be one to look out for on the European release.
