Review #823: Ridge Racer(Vita)

 Ridge Racer 7 - Shareware Edition

 These last couple of months I've been finally delving into Ridge Racer, and now it's time to delve into the black(est) sheep of the family, its Vita release. What this game is, in a nutshell, is like a demo of Ridge Racer 7, you get the same amazing gameplay, but 10% of the content... unless you pony up some cash for the DLC, which I'll never.

 What you get with this pathetic little cart is 3 courses and 5 cars. That's it. It's pretty much on par with the classic Ridge Racer games, but that era was long gone by then, so there's absolutely no excuse. I'd like to say that the picked 3 of the best tracks from RR7, but every track in that game was a winner, so I can't even claim that, but at least you can play all three tracks on reverse, I guess. The Single Player content is pretty much non-existent: Spot Race, which is a basic 3-lap race on any course you wish and Time Trial. The rest of the modes are exclusively online, which is pretty much dead so they don't count. You are meant to play the single races on the same three tracks over and over again, which will slowly upgrade your car, making you faster, while the CPU racers get stuck with their old machines, making it easier and easier. You also rack up points which you can use to add abilities to your car, such as change the way Nitro works and how you charge it. I mean, I was done with the game less than an hour in, but soldiered on through two more hours because Ridge Racer 7 was amazing and this game is pretty much a demo for RR7.

 The game comes packed with 7 different songs, and these are the best songs in the entire series. And that's saying something considering the entire series hasn't disappointed me yet with their OSTs. The graphics are quite good, all things considered, but the game struggles to maintain a 30 fps, I mean, it's acceptable, but sometimes it'll drop a few frames even when you are driving by your lonesome. Since this was an early Vita release it HAD to use its features, which means that the menus are exclusively touch-based and they are rather finicky, they should've gone with big, static buttons instead of menus and options you can scroll through. I mean, just like with the framerate, the menus are acceptable, but they are far from being an ideal in-and-out of the game.

 Despite the game being a complete failure as far as content goes, the game plays exactly like Ridge Racer 7. You got your big emphasis on drifting, you get a three-tier nitro gauge that fills as you drift and can be used with different multipliers: Use a basic nitro, X2 nitro or X3 nitro, managing it at your leisure. Even with a mediocre framerate the sense of speed is fantastic, and the amazing soundtrack makes it an easy game to get lost into. They also added a new blue/red static filter every time you collide with something which felt quite cool.

 This game presents me with the same conundrum the classic RR games did: The gameplay is top-notch, but there is no content. However, the truth is that it was easier to be more forgiving on the older games due to the era they were released in. That said, the fact is, this game has three completely unique tracks and a more refined driving system. That's why I'm gonna go with a 5.0. It has pretty much no content, true, but the gameplay is fantastic. I managed to get three hours worth of fun out of a measly three tracks, so that's gotta count for something.
 5.0 out of 10