The folks over at Namco-Bandai decided to get early traction with the release of Ridge Racer on the Vita shortly after the system launched. Which was a smart move initially as they could easily be the front runners in a new market and build a fan base early, but the question is did they get off to a great head start?
Once you start up your game you will have to choose your ‘team’ and car. From that point on though it isn’t much, but we will get into that later. The graphics are good, no slowing down of FPS or blurry moments. Even the driving mechanics and button response make this a very enjoyable game. The full presentation overall is what you would expect from a company that has some experience in the genre of games.
Another thing to bring up is definitely content. When you first start up Ridge Racer, you’ll notice rather quickly there are only three tracks available. Yes, not a typo, THREE. Now, there seems to be DLC’s that you can download for three more tracks, which is now only six, and yes you can race them in reverse but this just startles me with the history of this franchise, I guess I expected more then I got. To me more should have been offered to get your money worth of this title. If the price was lower then I would understand but at $29.99 retail I expect more.
Another thing you will figure out that there is no story line or career mode in this game, the ‘career’ mode would be that once you sign with your team your globally trying to beat them in repetitive races that don’t seem to hold much meaning without a story or a good progression system.
Honestly, the lack content started to be a trend for this game, limited features, no mainstream ghost options, and bad commentary that if you actually listen to it gets annoying. One good use of the ‘Near’ feature is that can find opposing racer’s best times. Namco-Bandai should’ve built more content for this title because the potential it has. The other thing is this was the chance to try and evolve this series as the Vita has options that could have been useful, they use the front touch screen to see your rear view, but this could have easily been the same gesture on the rear touch pad and more convenient.
The gameplay was good overall but nothing new and even sometimes it felt like you were drifting more on sand then an actual road. Due to the limited content and nothing new to the series this just killed the replay value and appeal of this game. I get that you will have to go over a track over and over but three-six tracks only is going to get repetitive quickly and will actually just void the fun you should get from this series. Namco-Bandai does have a chance to redeem itself with future downloads especially if they are free or at a very cheap low price. I noticed that they seem to come out with a new music set or song rather frequently and hopefully this is the same with future tracks and cars. Now you with everything that’s out today you can get 10 cars total and 6 tracks total but again this something you would probably expect from the beginning and then having 3 more extra tracks would be seen as actual DLC’s and not missing content.
