Wipeout HD

I miss big beat techno. My friend Todd misses big beat techno. I know we're not the only two nerds out there that miss hooky drum breaks over squealing synth lines. Back in the day (the late 90's in this case) big beat was popping up in various areas, VW commercials (Fluke's Atom Bomb), and video games soundtracks.

The game soundtrack that really caught my ear a the time was Wipeout XL. It had TONS of acts that I love, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Photek, the previously mentioned Fluke, and the list goes on.

Typically, when you think of the direction of purchase, you buy the video game first and if you like the music, you pick up the soundtrack. With Wipeout, it was the other way for me; I LOVED the soundtrack, and that lead me to the game. I ended up not getting too involved in the game, I liked it, but I wouldn't put it on a top 10 list or anything. Unless it was a top 10 list of games with badass soundtracks. Or a top 10 list of games that rhyme with "shmipeout".

Cut to 2010, Sony announces Playstation Plus (PS+), and with it, you get Wipeout HD, among other things. I hadn't yet purchased the game; honestly, I was kind of waiting for it to go on sale, because 15 dollars seems a bit too much to pay for something that is more interesting to me musically than as a game. Looking back though, I'm glad I picked it up with the subscription to PS+.

I played it a few times this week on my lunch break (ah, working from home, can you be more awesome?) and really started getting into it.

The first thing that I thought was that it seems like it's finally on a hardware platform that it deserves to be on. Wipeout was always one of the more graphically impressive titles on the PS1, and they've all looked good, but now it looks GOOOOOD. To go further, the menu presentation and design of the game is amazing. It has such a great visual style that really puts you in the game's world. It's really nice to see that extra work put in the menus, title screens, trophy icons, etc.

As for actually playing the game (what? I have to play it?) it took me more races than I'd like to admit (at the novice level, no less) to get to the point where I felt like I knew the controls and how the game needed me to respond on the track. Once I was in the Wipeout bucket though, I really started catching on. I set the difficulty to the non-shameful mode of "Skilled" (not "Expert", what are you nuts?) and started winning races.

To the music end, Wipeout has shifted this soundtrack to more drum and bass, and (please don't punch me for saying this) illbient sound. Yeah, that's a techno nerd for you. It's good, but, I miss the punch of big beat.

All in all, it's a really solid game with a level of depth that I didn't expect. It's been out for almost 2 years now, and I can't believe I've overlooked it for so long.