Ridge Racer 7 Review

Over the years, Ridge Racer has become SCEE’s trophy girlfriend. The giant of arcade racing spearheaded the launch line-up for the original PlayStation, PS2 and PSP, and once again Sony is showing off just what kind of beauty their new hardware can attract with Ridge Racer 7, an undeniably attractive launch title for the PlayStation 3.

But after so many releases what can a new Ridge Racer bring to a genre already at an evolutionary dead end? There is only so much any developer can do to evolve a game that boils down to the basic act of driving a car around a track.

With physics engines, car handling and the practicalities of the game nailed down some time ago, Namco has opted for a subtle redefinition of the trademarks that separate Ridge Racer from the crowded pack of high profile driving games. Meeting with mixed success, their attempts at reinvention have breathed some new life into the same old tracks, and though many will be on familiar tarmac with Ridge Racer 7, there is enough new on offer to attract both the diehard fans and the braver of the complete newcomers.

As always the focus remains on drifting, meaning that the best racing line will see you spending most of your time with the back wheels out sideways wrestling to overtake your front-end, as you fly round corners without a care for the brake.

This is certainly the most challenging of the more recent Ridge Racer titles, and though getting into drift is easier than ever, maintaining it to exit a corner with a smooth bite of your tyres onto the concrete can be frustratingly difficult, especially early on in the game when few cars are available. What is particularly annoying here is that even for the more experienced player, you have to endure several uninspiring races against inferior foes while you struggle with what seem like disproportionately substandard cars. But do persist and overcome this ironic difficulty spike, and soon you will be ranking up plenty of victories.

Which brings us to the competitor AI. It seems in most cases that apart from any NPC car in first position, most of your rival drivers stick together, and getting past this roadblock of a pack can be infuriating at times. Trying to time a drift through the crowd is sometimes impossible, and it is often the case that despite your best efforts you simply cannot penetrate the pack, time and time again.

Borrowing from its PSP cousin and Ridge Racer 6 on the 360, Ridge Racer 7 rewards long and controlled drifts with a trickle of NOZ into the nitrous gauge. Filling up your nitrous gives you a boost that can be triggered with a tap of a button, rather than the PSP system that saw your nitro end when you stopped holding down the shoulder button. This is a vast improvement as all to often on the PSP you could accidentally let go of your boost as your fingers negotiated a corner, resulting in you loosing the rest of your nitro until you filled the gauge again.

There is also a new emphasis on making use of slipstream. Trailing a slipstream is fairly easy as the space behind a car that lets you do this is generous in length and width. Timing the moment well, you can build up speed in the slipstream and then slingshot out overtaking individuals or, more often than not, the whole pack. The only thorn in this system’s side is that, as has always been the case with Ridge Racer, even the most delicate knock can lose you a lot of ground, and a slight miscalculation of your slingshot can easily send you straight into the back of the aforementioned pack of drivers.

One of the real bonuses of the slipstream feature is that it makes a welcome alternative to catch-up logic. Many driving games still rely on a mechanism that gives any vehicles at the back of the pack a slight speed advantage over the cars they trail. This is a nice idea in practice as it stops the race spreading too much and keeps the drama with the player, who is always greedily catching up or only just holding the lead.

On the downside though, it shatters the illusion of being in a complete game world, in much the same way that a guy in a Mickey Mouse suit ruins the illusion if he takes the head off to talk to a kid more clearly. What slipstreaming does justifies the catch-up logic, as whoever is behind has a genuine advantage. The commentator lets you know this each time someone hitches a ride on your own slipstream. The only problem here of course, is that if you really lose the car in front, you can get left behind without a slipstream to hook onto.

Though you can’t gain nitrous while boosting, the effect of your boost continues after it has finished, which is of particular use when entering a sweeping corner drift. As drifting gives you boost, boosting makes longer drifts possible, and quickly you learn to chain together the two with slipstreaming in a way not too dissimilar to the core mechanic of Excite Truck – the complete antithesis of ‘serious’ racing games. This further exaggerates the thrilling arcade feel that has always distinguished Ridge Racer from the ‘real driving sim’ genre, and the series’ legacy of extremism over realism is upheld with confidence.

Ridge Racer 6 was certainly a long way from being the prettiest game on the 360, but still, the graphical improvement on the PlayStation 3 version is noteworthy. Since the release of the beast in Sony’s other garage, Gran Turismo 4, we have all become fairly used to beautifully rendered cars glinting in the sunshine, but where Ridge Racer 7 steps up the ante is in the landscapes. The detail covering the hills, cityscapes and villages is fantastic, and the combination of a deep, crisp sky and some rich street lighting effects were made to show off your new PlayStation 3.

The final, and most substantial, addition to the game is the engine customisation option, which is fairly thorough, though never quite as exhaustive as Gran Turismo. All the standard speed and acceleration tune-ups exist here, but the most useful affect boosting and drift, allowing you to change back to the Flex system of boosting used in the PSP game, or work with other types such as reverse boost, which only lets you accumulate nitrous when boosting.

The soundtrack is also well worth highlighting, as it could make or break the game for you. Ridge Racer has always showcased some cutting edge techno and hard house, which is reason to choose the game for many fans. However, if you aren’t a devotee to pneumatic drill dance music, be warned, you’ll want to get at that audio options menu as quick as you can say yes to autosave.

Online the game excels, allowing up to 14 competitors to join the starting grid, and playing against real humans is, as ever, far more satisfying than trudging through the early stages of a game you are likely already familiar with. A loose story sets the game in Ridge State, with the Ridge State Grand Prix making the main game, with various side challenges and manufacturer races bringing the total to over 160 races across 22 tracks (44 including reversals).

There is nothing revolutionary about Ridge Racer 7, but it is one of the best driving games on a console already busy with automotive titles. If you’re looking for a frantic, fast racing game that is more concerned with nitrous and Hollywood handling than realism and heavy breaking, you should seriously consider letting Namco’s latest drift into your game collection.