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R: Racing Evolution Preview
Mark Simons
10/06/2003
Ridge Racer grows up and is looking better then ever in our humble opinion...
The Ridge Racer games have always been synonymous with fast, flashy arcade racing and the PlayStation. For the latest game R: Racing Evolution both those Ridge Racer staples are being turned on their head.
As you may have deduced from these screenshots R: Racing Evolution has a much more realistic feel, taking place with licensed cars and authentic circuits. You would be forgiven for thinking that Namco are trying to take on Gran Turismo, but that isn't necessarily the case.
Namco can do realistic very well, just see our review of Moto GP 3 on the PS2 to see what we mean, and R: RE will be a fusion of Ridge Racer and Moto GP technology to create a new game. Essentially it seems that Namco want this to be a driving game that is accessible to all. Courses will be chosen to ease people into racing, rather than throwing them in at the deep end. We would argue that Gran Turismo does do this with the license tests, but given that R: RE has a narrative structure Namco could train you in some interesting ways.
The game follows Rina Hayami, shock horror a female driver! who we assume starts out a rookie and ends up a world champion - or something similar. Sorry if we ruined it for you... Okay so it probably won't be the deepest plot ever, but Ridge Racer Type 4 did a good job of putting you as a character in a team and we assume that similar things will happen to Rina. Hopefully Namco will implement some sort of rival thing, so that relationships between drivers in a championship, and the narrative can be changed slightly by what you do in the race. Saying that, there is apparently only one major narrative and one ending, so it remains to be seen how much, if any, influence you can have over the story.
There is also an evil looking â“ it's the red and black suit okay â“ Gina Cavalli who could well be Rina's nemesis. With one in white and blue and the other in red and black could they be any more different? Probably, anyway, here's hoping for off-the-course-fighting to translate into on track anger and danger; it would certainly be good to have someone ramming you because of something in the wider plot, and we've wanted something like that for a while.
A couple of strong female leads with some accessible courses, could Namco be trying to get more females to play driving games? Or is it just that Rina manages to look quite sexy in skin-tight leather racing outfit that can be undone to reveal her wonderfully sculpted chest... Probably the latter, the reason Rina looks so good is that Namco have their best CG artists working on creating all of the cut-scenes for the game, the character artists from Tekken and Soul Calibur II. This one will look purty.
As well as looking good R: RE should sound good with a good mixture of licensed and original music. The vocal remix of the Boom Boom Satellites 'On the Painted Desert' that featured in the credits of Ridge Racer 5 is a thing of genius â“ just had to get that out there. The people behind the music for the Ridge Racer and Ace Combat series are working on this one, so it should sound the business.
Whilst it seems that GT4 is focusing on a massive huge multi-player affair with an eye to online, R: RE could have the focused one player game in its favour. It looks good, has some real life courses, rallying and a good-looking story, hopefully providing the scope for some enjoyable gaming moments. In fact with no online mode and even no plans for link cable support â“ it was in Ridge Racer Evolution and Rage Racer but not widely used, it seems that one-player is the way to go.
It's currently unknown how many courses or cars there will be in the game, it looks like Monaco is in there, and we've spotted a Viper, Skyline, NSX, Impreza, De Tomaso Pantera and some mad crazy looking thing called the Advan Kondo which looks a lot of fun. There will probably be a fair few more cars, but Ridge Racer has never been about masses and masses of cars to attain, rather the racing is the focus.
