New Ridge Racer games and PlayStation launches have gone hand-in-hand since the first Ridge Racer game was released along side the original PlayStation console. The game made four appearances on PlayStation before Namco released the fifth, Ridge Racer V, on the PlayStation 2 soon after its launch. Without missing a stride, Namco released the most recent in the series, Ridge Racers, launched alongside the PSP launch.

Ridge Racers is a drifting style racer, just as its predecessors have been. Drifting is the driving style of sliding the car through the corner, rather than steering around the corner. The game is very much an arcade style game, meaning that your success depends fully on your ability to drive, rather than your ability to modify your car and drive it successfully.

The main section of the game is the World Tour section. Here is where you will unlock new cars and tracks to use in other parts of the game. When you start World Tour, you will begin in the Basic section which has nine blocks of varying track number. Each track has a certain position you must finish in – the first track in the block requiring a third or fourth place finish, the last track of the block requiring a first place finish.

Once you select the track you want to race, you have to select your car. You will begin with the choice of three different cars. Each car has a different drift set-up – STD (the standard drift set-up), MLD (a mild drift set-up) or DYN (dynamic or extreme drift set-up). After a few races, you will start using the car which feels best to you. While selecting your vehicle, you can choose from one of 25 colors for your car, the only customization in the game. Next, select your transmission preference and you’re ready to go.

After the track loads, you will be given a short introduction to the track. Here you can choose which song you want to hear, and are given information about the track, number of laps, and position you must finish in (or better). You can of course skip all this with the push of a button and get right to the racing.

After finishing blocks, you will unlock new cars and tracks. There will be a short movie showing your new car being pulled out of a trailer – a nice touch which gives a more hands-on feel to the game. There are six classes of cars, each one more powerful than the one before it. Each car in the class runs at similar top speeds, while acceleration and handling will vary between the models. Once you have unlocked all the tracks and completed them in Basic, you will unlock the Pro section and get to race more tracks – but this time with some stiff competition.

True to its arcade roots, it doesn’t get much deeper than that. Simply win races and proceed, unlocking new cars and tracks on the way. But the game does this very successfully. It is very easy to get bored with repetitive tasks, but this game brings enough variety into the tracks and cars to make each race exciting.

Graphics: 9/10

Let’s just get this out of the way now: this game is visually stunning. One of the first things you notice about this game is just how impressive the graphics really are and how different they look than any other portable game you’ve ever seen. The cars are very detailed, the courses are amazingly complex, and the overall package exceeds many PS2 games. The only problem lies in a bug which will flash a white line across the screen where there should be no white line. It doesn’t happen very often, but it is there. If that gets corrected for the US version, there is no reason to say this game isn’t graphically perfect.

Sound: 7.5/10

One of the greatest things about UMDs, is that we now how CD quality music on our portable games. Ridge Racers does not disappoint while providing classic Ridge Racer tunes. There are two discs – red and blue – which have a wide selection of songs to choose from. The sound effects are also impressive, but they do have some issues. The voice over during the racing will comment if you do something good or something bad – but it is not always cued correctly. The game may tell you have done a nice pass, when you haven’t passed the car yet. It’s minor inconsistency that is more of an annoyance than a problem.

Gameplay: 8/10

The game is what it is, and nothing more. It is a great arcade style racer, with little innovation. The inclusion of the new nitro boosts (which you build up while drifting) is a nice touch, but it has been done many times before. It is a simple arcade racer, standing out only because of the attention to detail and presentation which could only have been created by Namco.

Value: 9/10

Ridge Racers could have easily been an excellent, highly respected game on the PS2. As it turns out, it will be known as an excellent, highly respected game for the PSP. The production looks and feels like a big budget game. You feel as if nothing was held back when developing this game, and there is a great satisfaction in that, if not only because it has been released in a portable market where games always seem to be holding something back when compared to their console counterparts.

Tilt: 10/10

No one knew what to expect with the launch of the PSP. The launch of the PS2 was a disaster – every game seeming like it was finished early or just plain crap. Gamers would have to wait many months for a PS2 game to appear which was considered a must have title. Sony followed that debacle with possibly one of the best launches ever for the PSP. Ridge Racers will easily become a permanent part of any PSP owner’s collection. It leads the pack of many impressive games and will definitely give any racing game great competition for years to come.

Overall: 87%

The only reason not to own this game is because you don’t own a PSP. Ridge Racers is a collage of everything good in previous Ridge Racers games, making it possibly the best of the series. Namco has succeeded in delivering a very impressive title for a launch that will hopefully represent the quality of games we will see in the years to come for PSP.

Battery Life: The only possible downfall of stunning graphics and amazing gameplay is the affect it has had on battery life. You will get about four hours of gaming before you will either have to plug your PSP in or switch out the battery.