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"Pure racing gold.... at times."

''Like podracing, only not like it at all.''

Wipeout 3 is another product of French developer Psygnosis, whose games are either stellar or entirely horrible for me. In either case, Psygnosis has delivered unto us another in the lineage of anti-gravity racing games. Wipeout 3 introduces a few new elements into the genre, captures an amazing sense of speed, and gives you more product than the wipeouts before it. Unfortunately, Wipeout also has its share of problems that can hinder the amazing playability this game is capable of.

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PREMISE
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''Race, dammit.''

Wipeout 3 works off of the same premise as its predecessors, namely that in the future racing is done via anti-gravity vehicles, capable of great speeds. If rocket-powered hovercrafts weren't exciting enough, the F7200 racing league has given the OK to deadly-type explosives and miscellaneous weaponry able to level a small city. In short, anything goes in the racing league, so if you can get an edge over the competition, go for it.

Seeing as how a story is never a part of any racing game, I'm not going to be critical of the fact that there's no story, especially because the games that include it in this genre focus around a few dorky pilots and the trials they must overcome as both humans and drivers. Spare me, Hamlet.

All in all, Wipeout has a cool premise, and as far as I'm concerned it's the only futuristic racing series that can pull it off without seeming overly campy or gimmicky.

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GRAPHICS
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''32 bits of whiplash!''

Wipeout 3 is a good PlayStation title to show off to anyone who claims the graphics are sub-par. Wipeout draws much of its strength from the fact that it not only delivers a sense of breakneck speed, but exudes style and slickness even during slow moments.

Wipeout's design system is impeccable. If memory serves me correctly, Psygnosis commissioned an actual design firm to help with the menus, options, and logos. It shows. Little details look slick, visually impressive, and eye-catching due to the simplistic but futuristic touches. Weapon indicators are simple, yet effective. The logos look professionally done, and give a sense of identity to each racing team. Menus are clear, direct, and easy to navigate, and even the lettering is different and unique. All in all, the game has a slick GUI, and the cockpit indicators in-game have a similar sense of style.

The actual graphics are just as impressive to me. The crafts themselves look fast, sleek, and futuristic without being overly so. The craft designs stray often from the normal impression of what a future-racer should look like, and the result is something to be proud of. Additionally, the designs work within the context of being low in geometry (read: low polygon count) without seeming like a graphical flaw. Although only 8 ships in the game, each looks strikingly different from the others to yield a new identity.

The tracks are perhaps the most awe-inspiring thing, each something newer and more challenging than the last one. Certain tracks have jaw-dropping features unmatched by any other racer, and each track has an atmosphere different from the ones before or after it. Compare the bleak, dreary industrial zone of Hi-Fumi with the P-mar Project racetrack, replete with baloons and clear skies, and you'll be able to tell that some time was spent here.

I could continue to go on about the giant corkscrew in the Mega Mall track, or the speeding off of buildings to new tracks in manor top. Wipeout 3 has amazing track design that blows competitors out of the water, especially considering that there's a different feel to each track, unlike the too familiar ''well, it's the same track, but BACKWARDS! And with a loop in it!''

Wipeout 3's most alluring feature, and one that is a truly awesome thing to see, is the ability to render extremely high speeds. While you run over speed pads and hyper-boost ahead of the competition, things begin to move proportionally as fast. Assuming you can control it, you hurtle through the level while the graphics continue as if nothing's out of the ordinary. The usual slowdown and assorted ''going too fast'' problems are absent here, instead you're left with what a racer should be like while travelling faster than you're prepared to handle. Any game that makes me say ''Oh, crap.'' while flying towards my doom is a good one, and because of this the future speed-racing becomes ever more involving.

Unfortunately, Wipeout does have one shortcoming graphically, and that's through the unspectacular weapons. Sure you can shoot rockets, plasma, missiles, and use shields, but none of them ever feel rewarding because of the elementary look of things. None of the weapons produces an awe-inspiring effect proportional to the graphics, and even when they connect with an opponent the result is fairly ho-hum. For as much time that went into the crafts, design, and the tracks, I would have liked some proportional eye-candy from my tools of death. Who wouldn't?

In spite of that, Wipeout succeeds in rendering a slick universe full of fast-looking racers. Track design is awesome, and the speed is right on key with everything else. All in all, a resounding achievement.

Graphics: 9 / 10
Brilliant overall, but the weapons are lackluster.

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SOUND AND MUSIC
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''Hey Sasha! Here's a lot of money!''

If there's one thing that immediately pops into mind about Wipeout 3 for the music, it's the fact that they paid DJ Sasha to come up with new tracks for this game. Who is Sasha? Sasha is a DJ, which is why they call him DJ Sasha. He makes techno music, usually so he can pay the bills. Therefore, when Psygnosis says ''Here's money, but we want music.'' Sasha jumps at the chance.

Aside from Sasha, the soundtrack to Wipeout 3 features works of various other techno artists, including MKL, the Propellerheads, Underword, and the Chemical Brothers. Needless to say, if you loathe techno with every aspect of your being, you won't like the music much at all. Considering that the game is going off of existing artists for the music as opposed to in-house musicians, a common result of the ''let's get real guys for the soundtrack'' approach is a sloppy sort of disjointedness, much like Jet Grind Radio's US track inclusions, where Rob Zombie and Jurassic 5 fight for radio space.

Oppositely, Wipeout's music tracks are on the whole very similar to one another, yet avoid sounding like an hourlong remix of the same song. Brownie points in my book. There's a sense of unity among the music without repetition, which is something a lot of game soundtracks neglect. Again, all of the music selections fit the atmosphere of the game to a T.

The sound is something else entirely, because outside of the stellar music, the game falls short. Sound effects are muffled, quiet, and entirely unimpressive. There isn't a whole lot to be enamored with here, and the included sounds are very similar to one another. Rockets, earthquakes, shields, and mines all sound predictable and boring. Too bad, really. There are some good sound effects, like the scraping sound when you cut corners too close, or the recharging going through a pit stop, but you quickly forget about them when you hear another wussy explosion. Have any of you ever heard something blow up that was quiet and muffled? I know I haven't.

When you take a look at the sound and music in Wipeout 3, it really is a mixed bag. You have an amazing high of an excellently produced soundtrack, yet you have the disappointing low of the sub-par sounds.

Sound and Music: 7 / 10
Great music, poor sound.

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GAMEPLAY
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''TOO!.... FAST!... TO!... CONTROL!''

Wipeout 3 is a solid and enjoyable racer in the face of quite a few problems. However, these problems might be more severe than others, especially when coupled with what you're expecting out of a game like Wipeout 3. If you bought it for the design, sense of speed, and the graphics, like I did, Wipeout 3 is a decent playing game. Should you have bought it for the AI competition and sheer racing, you may find yourself out of luck.

To its credit, the vehicles have enough diversity between them to avoid a clear-cut ''best ship in the game,'' as with previous Wipeouts. Each has differences in acceleration, durability, maximum speed, and handling, so that the areas you excel in you can make more effective through ship choice. If you're militant, go with a tank-like ship, but people with more finesse and conservative energy use might find the faster and more responsive ships to their liking.

Excluding the expected differences in speed and handling between the ships, the control is extremely tight and responsive, as analog control is supported. Unlike many racers, which require you to mash the stick all the way in the direction you want to turn into, Wipeout 3's turning is extremely tight and precise. Move the stick a little too far, and you'll eat wall. Move it too slow, and you'll run into something.

The precision in the steering is further augmented by the air brakes, left and right, which allow for tight turns at the sacrifice of some speed. On many tracks, there are more than a few instances where it's required more than it is optional, unless you like running into stuff. The air braking gives a nice ability to drift through turns while maintaining a high speed, so you'll end up using it often.

Another tool at your disposal is the hyper-boost system, which allows for a large burst of speed at the sacrifice of your life bar. Although intended as a sacrifice for certain instances where you fall behind, the hyper-boost again becomes a necessity rather than an option. Any track that has a straight section of track forces you to hyperboost in order to stay competitive, especially on the higher levels.

THEN THERE'S THE PROBLEMS.....

Wipeout 3's weapon system feels more of a gimmick, and less of a gameplay staple to the series this time around. Amazingly, every single weapon fails to impress me, and the raceway is inundated by absolutely useless pickups that you ditch as soon as you realize you have it. Take for instance the autopilot mode, which takes control of your ship to computer-guide you through the track sections. It's too bad autopilot is slower than your normal speed, and often launches you at a wall at whatever time it ends or you decide to cancel it. There's also the reflector power-up, which reflects missiles and rockets back at the user. Problem is, the enemy almost never uses these offensive weapons, and even if they are reflected back, your opponents are behind you already, essentially bettering you in no way whatsoever.

As most of the weapons are offensive, the position of number one becomes an incredibly boring one in the regular races. Everyone's behind you, and you can't look back over your shoulder to attack them. If you attempt to monitor their position with the over-the-shoulder cam, chances are you'll have run into something given Wipeout 3's frenetic track design.

Even the normally useful weapons can produce maddening results, however, as if an opponent is pegged with a rocket from a distance, he'll slow down and block the track, becoming an obstacle that hurtles towards you to annihilate your built-up speed. And this was supposed to help me, right? All in all, the weapons aren't terribly amazing by themselves, and can be downright irritating over the course of a game.

The racing suffers from a few problems as well, namely a difficulty curve that resembles a straight drop. The first race league is mind-bogglingly easy, and can be won without any air-braking, weapon use, race-line starts, or hyper-boosting. As soon as you enter the next race, your opponents immediately surge ahead of you, and if you didn't master the tools you had in the first race, there's no conceivable way to win. There should have been a gentler, kinder curve, as if the first races require no advanced techniques, and the next level up requires mastery of these said techniques, many people are going to quit on it.

In a cheap attempt to boost replay, only four of the eight ships are immediately selectable. You need to race single races in each league in order to unlock tracks and ships, but for that league only. Assuming you want all tracks and ships for a certain league, you'll be racing for a long while. You'd be out of luck if your best racer is not one of the ships immediately selectable at the start for the higher skill levels, as chances are you aren't going to win any races otherwise. At any rate, the way to gain new courses and ships is through replaying the same tracks over and over. It would have been nice to have a few more open immediately, or at the very least a lowering of the amount of races that need to be won for things to unlock.

Although I praise the speed, it can also be a major downfall of the game. In many of the tracks, there are large stretches of straightaways loaded with speed pads that end in a hairpin turn. While I can appreciate this in a track-design sense, there's very little you can do to slow down, seeing as how the only means of braking is by pressing both air-brake buttons at the same time. Even so, you'll probably hit one button a millisecond before the other and navigate yourself into a wall. In the tracks that move at this speed, your opponents will be at the difficulty setting where that one slip-up will cost you the win. In short, certain tracks are unwinnable to most players, especially if they had trouble with the first jump in difficulty.

Put bluntly, the game is entirely unforgiving after the first race league. Certain tracks are too fast to be navigable, and your opponents will be so merciless that you have no chance of beating them on these tracks. The game is way too hard, and could have benefited from more balanced jumps in difficulty.

WHY DO I LIKE IT?

Seeing as how I was let down by the one-sided racing and the less than stellar weapon systems, there are a lot of things to do besides the tournament and single-races. Take away the weapons and opponents, and you have a stellar time-trial mode which allows you to experience tracks at their best. Given enough time on the time trials, you'll have the skills to beat the second race league, which I think should have been the ''hard'' setting. I find it to be the perfect challenge, and the one at which many of Wipeout 3's problems are the least noticeable.

Although Wipeout 3 can screw up a lot of things with the AI and the difficulty, both problems are removed when playing the game solo, just buzzing through levels for the control and speed, which are uncorrupted by everything else. Wipeout 3 has some stellar high points, but sadly you need to know where to look. Trying to beat your old times and the times of the developers can be very fun, admittedly.

MORE GOOD THAN BAD?

To the gamer suffering from a lack of time, and expecting a competitive racing thrill, Wipeout 3 will fail to deliver. For the gamers looking for something new and fast, Wipeout 3 can be a very nice title, assuming you like to play with yourself more than the lackluster computer. On the whole, I don't think that even with all of the problems present in the high difficulties Wipeout 3 becomes a bad game, but it truly is very far off from being a perfect title.

Gameplay: 6.5 / 10
Fast, thrilling, and responsive, but also infuriating and needlessly difficult.

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OVERALL
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''I'm bored now, so I'm not going to read this, you rambling moron.''

I realize I may have lost many of the short attention spans during the gameplay section, so If you've made it all the way here, thanks. If you haven't figured it out by now, Wipeout 3 has both the ability to lift you up as well as slam you back down. Some may find the game irritating, others might find it a complete thrill. I found it to be both, but was able to figure out what it was that bothered me in order to avoid it.

Assuming you spend enough time with Wipeout 3 in order to do the same, you'll find a lot to like. There's a sense of speed and control virtually unmatched by any other racer, and there's such a slick and stylish feel that can't be denied. Track designs are excellent, both visually and gameplay-wise, and each craft has a unique ''personality'' to warrant a use, if not repeated usages.

However, for a game that presents itself as a ''futuristic combat racer'', it fails on two of the three grounds to make that a true statement. This is not Twisted Metal with hover cars, nor is it Gran Turismo with weapons. Wipeout 3 is its own game, and one that can delight on many levels outside of what it claims it is.

Play it for the right reasons, and you'll love it.

Overall: 8 / 10
Dust off the problems and you'll find yourself a gem.

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*Is every computer-voice in the future British?

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/02, Updated 02/18/02