Ridge Racer

Like clockwork, Ridge Racer is sliding in for the launch of a new PlayStation. Rather than delivering a fast-paced payload, this Vita racer is here just to take your money and run.

This is still Ridge Racer as we've come to know and love it, so I guess it's not all bad. That said, if you're not a diehard fan of the franchise, you should stay away from this incredibly overpriced, surprisingly repetitive and framedrop-littered piece of garbage.

There's a nice idea hidden somewhere in Ridge Race for the Vita, but it just doesn't come out of its shell. The focus lays on online races, and not even very expansive. Just being able to have a good race has been overlooked with this racer.

This entry has gone horribly awry. [May 2012, p.83]

The only way this Vita version differentiates itself from the umpteenth Ridge Racers out there is the way it feels like a demo. You only get three cars and five tracks and no solo career. Want more content? Start paying, sucker. [April 2012, p79]

It has a criminally low number of courses that have all appeared in previous Ridge Racer games, no interesting career structure whatsoever, a new car customizing feature that somehow manages to make the "machines" feel less unique, and a bunch of music that also appeared in the old games. You'd have to be extremely hard up for any form of ridge racing for this to add up to something worth purchasing.

An example of how unsympathetic and otherwise hilarious a game can be. For not a lot of money you get the plain base and the rest you have to buy – and play it in multiplayer only. [March 2012]

Few tracks, few cars, little fun. Ridge Racer is an ugly demo sold at thirty euro with the amazing idea of expanding the game content through DLC.

Simply put, the content doesn't match with the price, not even close. There is space for alternative price models, but Ridge Racer asks way too much for this first step, which ruins the whole idea. It may have a future, but its present is poor.

Ridge Racer for PS Vita is simply the worst experiment in the video games industry that we've seen in ages.

Instead of focusing on Ridge Racer's strengths, Namco Bandai decided to try out a bizarre new business model. The game ships with just a measly five cars and three tracks. Yes, you read those numbers correctly. [March 2012, p.64]

A baffling proposition: a racing game with barely any content. It might be cheap, but it's inexcusably lazy.

The gameplay alone is overfamilar enough but the appalling value for money and dearth of content makes this the worst Ridge Racer for years.

Ridge Racer offers incredibly poor value, with a lack of compelling content to back up its competent arcade racing credentials.

It's an overly complicated system that screams of an attempt to be modern and forward-looking, but will actually end up with a bunch of pissed-off purchasers feeling like they've paid nearly 20 pounds for a trial version. Which, to be perfectly honest, is pretty much all this is.

This is one of the biggest disappointments of the system, and the year.

A shallow demo with minimal functionality outside Wi-Fi access, this just isn't an appealing offer. If the core game was a free download, things could be different. [March 2012, p.91]

Where the original was ultimately a launch-pad for grand ideas in subsequent games, the new one is a cynical, impotent attempt at modernization.