If I hadn’t played Ridge Racer Revolution straight after Sega Rally Championship it might have helped. They’re similar games, which is not such a surprise given that they’re each in their own way answers to the original Ridge Racer. They both let you race a very limited number of cars around a very limited number of tracks with a whole lot of brightly lit scenery changes and a slightly vestigial-feeling countdown timer. What they do within that framework, though, is crucially different.
Ridge Racer Revolution’s initial three tracks are different layouts of roads within the same overall location, and the realisation of the place is where it is at its most inspiring. Cityscapes with tunnels and big advertising boards showing Pac-man give way to beaches, palm trees and green seas, to winding roads up and down the mountainside. Everything looks impressively real in terms of occupying space into the distance as it whizzes past, and the colourful location is matched by pumping music and a cheesily enthusiastic commentator who offers such helpful advice as “don’t let them get away!” I cracked up when I barged my way past another car and he exclaimed something about sparks flying. It was something about the ungainly timing of it all.
All of that set up goes towards an atmosphere of breezy arcade fun (assuming you can accept races starting with grid girls as being part of that fun). When it comes to the driving, though, something goes awry. All of the encouragement of the soundtrack and the views had me thinking that I could throw my car around in a fun way (and a way like Sega Rally).
That illusion was soon crushed, and as my twitchy, oversteering beast of a car swiped into the palm trees the illusion of the place took some serious damage too. Unlike the palm trees. In Ridge Racer Revolution, there are no different surfaces and also no different effects of going wrong. The side of a tunnel and a bunch of flimsy looking palm trees alike prove a solid barrier to bounce off. The world is a painted wall.
The best way I could find to improve and to get any closer to setting the kind of pace needed to advance was to adopt a much more cautious approach. Instead of flinging the car around corners, I started carefully braking ahead of them and only then turning them. There is a drift mechanism, but it’s a brutally unforgiving one. Either way, the style of driving required sits completely at odds with the bright aesthetic, which makes it even harder to stick to.
When it worked and I managed to overtake other cars it didn’t even feel particularly rewarding, thanks to some of the most blatantly artificial racing I’ve ever seen. The other cars practically seem to be going backwards to let you through, up to the point where you make a tiny mistake and they speed off into the far distance at a significant proportion of the speed of light. Ridge Racer Revolution is a shiny machine with bits that fall off when subjected to the slightest examination. Unlike the palm trees.
