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Quantum Redshift Review
Chris Leyton
00/12/0000
From the creators of Wipeout and Wipeout 2097 comes a new futuristic racer for the Xbox.
Wipeout Fusion proved to be a disappointing experience, considering the rich heritage of the series and the length of development we were expecting something groundbreaking. Unfortunately our expectations were barely met and the game proved to be a damp squib of its former self, rather then the adrenaline-fuelled experience we were hoping for.
Part of this can be attributed to the well-documented development troubles that Team Liverpool came up against; Pysgnosis the series creator had disbanded and become part of SCEE resulting in a game that lost that Wipeout feeling.
Having finished work on the series finest hour, Wipeout 2097, a selection of the original team left Psygnosis and formed Curly Monsters, responsible for the first futuristic racer on the Xbox, Quantum Redshift.
Set 100 years in the future, itâs your task to win the Quantum Redshift Tournament in crafts that are capable of achieving speeds of over 900 MPH! Instead of simply selecting a vehicle or team, you have to select from one of 16 different racers in an attempt to get some charisma in the game. Youâll find that each character has a small story detailing why they want to win the World Championship, to be honest itâs all a little shallow and probably better off skipping the whole cut-sceneâs that frequently break-up the game. However this does serve to be one of the games few innovative touches in that each character has a nemesis, whoâll do their best to cause you as much trouble as possible. Equally youâll receive extra points by being nasty to them and causing them as much hassle as possible. To be honest itâs not dynamic enough and youâll eventually find yourself forgetting about the whole rivalry system.
The games main challenge lies in the Tournament Mode, which contains a number of difficulty levels. To begin with youâll only have access to Novice and Amateur, however with only two and four stages respectively youâll find yourself quickly progressing through these and opening up the three extra modes; Expert, Master and Redshift.
On the track youâll find that the game is slightly different to what youâd expect from a futuristic racer. Instead of picking up weapons along the race, each craft comes equipped with a homing weapon, a ground based weapon and a shield, represented by an icon at the top of the screen. Throughout the track are a number of glowing blobs; Red for your homing weapon, Blue for your ground-based weapon and Yellow for your shield. Collecting these gives powers up the relevant category, whilst the Mega-Power Up powers up all of the categories. At the end of each race youâll be given cash depending on your performance to upgrade each category, resulting in more powerful attacks and stronger shields. The turbo feature is also slightly different to other racers in the genre; you have a fixed amount of time to use the boost, which gets replenished with every new lap in a similar style to F-Zero but without the pit stops. As with weapons you can upgrade how much turbo time you have per lap.
Onto the actual racing and you canât help but feel youâve done it all before; race fast and use weapons to gain first place. However Quantum Redshift certainly does a better job of portraying speed then any other title in the genre, a silky 60FPS framerate conveys travelling at over 900MPH extremely well. However itâs easy to see why this genre has begun to falter, as you canât see where any innovation or the next step is going to come from.
The nature of the open-ended track designs is both a blessing and a curse. Certain sections are a joy to behold as you plummet from a high cliff into a lake below, however this also means that youâll be spending a lot of time crashing against walls particularly on the harder difficulty sections. The original Wipeout titles kept it simple by featuring enclosed tracks and so the speed was kept high, expanding the track opens up the scope for more errors and ultimately a very stop-start experience.
Those water sections that feature in a large amount of the races are absolutely amazing; youâll dive underwater whilst still carrying on the race and emerge back on the ground with some of the best water droplet effects weâve ever seen.
The most impressive aspect of Quatum Redshift is certainly in the visual stakes. Firstly that sense of spped does just make you go wow, however itâs something youâd expect from an Xbox title, especially considering itâs only chucking around six vehicles on-screen. The game features the usually high-quality textures that we expect from the Xbox, the vehicles themselves have a nice clean sheen to them and are generally well designed. But the biggest âahhâ has to go to water-droplet effects that appear after you emerge from the water sections, just watch as the inertia realistically pulls the drops off your windscreen. Split screen four-player mode is handled nicely with the same sensation of speed, however youâll have to make do without the fancy water effectsâ¦
The sound has been handled by Junkie XL, who recently handled the Elvis remix âA Little Less Conversationâ and works really well, though itâs one of those soundtracks that are based on personal taste. The soundtrack is dynamically mixed, so when you hit that turbo the bass will hit in, something that I hope more videogames will begin to use. Supporting Dolby 5.1, the sound effects are generally impressive, ranging from the various weapon effects to hearing the rain-drops hitting your screen. Those who donât like the mixture of ambient tunes and big-bass can always add their own tunes to the playlist, a feature that I truly love about the Xbox.
