Wipeout Fusion

by Vivendi Universal Games

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000066EXR
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: June 18, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,182 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #90 in Video Games > PlayStation 2 > Racing

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

This reinvention of the popular antigravity racing combat game features 32 ship models, 16 pilots in eight teams, 45 tracks on seven different courses, six single-player modes, five multiplayer modes, and 26 weapons. Track locations include jungle, desert, city, and mountain settings. The biggest tracks are three times longer than any previous Wipeout circuit. The game features six racing modes, including a revised arcade mode, a full league option, and an elimination mode, as well as time trial, endurance racing, and a secret "zone" mode. Once certain parts of the game are complete, a reverse track mode is unlocked.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Perfect, but still a blast!, June 20, 2002

By 

Jarrod Leda (Tarentum, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wipeout Fusion (Video Game)

The 4th episode in the Wipeout Saga, Fusion was originally set as a launch title for the PS2. During its 2 years of delays, other games tried to tap the formula(Extreme G Racing , Kinetica , Star Wars Racers Revenge) to mixed results. Now the game that started it all is back, and Im happy to say , mostly lives up to its reputation.
The first thing is the control. There was nothing better than making that perfect lap in Wipeout Xl or Wipeout 3 , the control of those games was dead on. Fusion has a different feel, ships feel more 'on rails' than previous games, almost making it harder if your used to the physics of the older games. But a little time with it, and I was screaming around the tracks like the old days, and as you progress and the better ships and higher speed modes come, the control is fine.
There are a few graphic problems, which is why I didnt give it perfect marks. There are polygon pop up's , and when the action gets heavy, the framerate slows down, making it difficult to steer. Those problems aside, the graphics are great, crisp track designs, and little touches on weapons are spectacular. Dust kicks up when your off track and on the ground(although its a nod to pod-racing that should have been left out of Wipeout) and the ship designs themselves are high polygon and very cool.
The soundtrack features great tracks by the likes of Orbital, Timo Maas, Luke Slater, Hybrid and more. A much more breakbeat feel this time, but the tracks are fitting and sound great.
All in all, its not perfect, But the best thing out on PS2 of this type. With tons of stuff to unlock, and awesome 2 player weapons, youll be playing this a while. :)

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre rehash of a much beloved game series, July 4, 2002

By 

W. Bexton (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wipeout Fusion (Video Game)

Let's go back a few years. I bought a Playstation _so_I_could_play_ WipeOut XL. That's 360 bucks for one game. Wonderful graphics and tracks, a powerful soundtrack by incredible electronic artists. Still play it, love it, even though it's pre-analog controller and the graphics are early Playstation era. It's one of those games that makes you want to shoot fireballs out of your hands. Jump forward a bit. Wipeout 3. OH MY GOD. BOOM. Aural, god-like soundtrack, blistering speed, BETTER graphics than XL, and an interface design that destroys all that stand in its path. I haven't seen a game since that tops it for overall focus of intent and feeling. It is a work of art.

...So I HAD to get Wipeout Fusion. Atari-era soundtrack of bad techno. No energy in the music.

I think they may have actually de-evolved the game to produce this definite SEQUEL. Puerile ship designs and world treatments. Think cotton candy compared to XL's patinated steel or 3's crisp diamond edge. The prior game producers (original, XL and 3), Psygnosis, must be crying over this butchery. BAM! did an awful job with this game. Turning action is jumpy, there aren't movement cues where there should be, there are exagerated movement and visual cues where there REALLY shouldn't be. Ship and weapon noises take two steps back.

The menu interface is bad, and the visual atmosphere employed both in and out of the race just falls flat. The design of all elements is overly commercial, uninteresting, bland. The introduction of characters into the game is needless and gimmicky, and brings a feeling of GTA3 meatheadedness to what should be a hard, fast, and beautiful sci-fi racing game. I'm going to try playing again tomorrow, with the music off, and with a clear head, and see if I'm still as negatively focused on this game. For now however, I'm pronouncing that from this corner of the WipeOut fan crowd, the consensus of one is unanimous: this game BLOWS.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars sigh, what a shame..., July 2, 2002

By 

Bob Manson (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wipeout Fusion (Video Game)

There have been so many PS/2 games that weren't quite what they should've been. I don't care so much about light sourcing or smoke effects in the games I play; I want games that are well-polished and fun to play. Too many PS/2 games are relying on good graphics to carry the day.

Unfortunately, the Wipeout Fusion designers seem to have focused more on the dust and smoke and less on the game itself.

The graphics are OK. The resolution is noticeably better than in the PSone (of course), but there are noticeable popup effects and framerate problems as well. (In bad cases I've seen the framerate slow to what appears to be less than 5 frames a second. Wip3out at its worst was better than this.)

The gameplay itself also has significant problems. The first noticable issue is that it's tough to compare the different ships--unlike the first two games, each ship is on a separate screen and the various statistics aren't directly comparable. Not a huge problem, but it struck me right away as something easily fixable but quite annoying... especially as some of the more advanced ship descriptions are less than helpful.

There are also some big clipping problems. I've gotten my ship blown through walls, mountains, rocks, you name it. The game recovers cleanly, and sometimes it's even an advantage (depending on where you can be placed back onto the track) but again, it's annoying. I can't recall this sort of problem ever happenign in Wipeout XL/3... Maybe the designers considered this to be a feature, but I haven't found it so, especially as the ship often ends up in very strange places and can even get trapped.

Some of the new weapons exacerbate the clipping issues. One of them (gravity bomb) gives your ship a high acceleration before stopping it dead, and the high acceleration causes a lot of the clipping issues. (It also has a very large area of effect, which I can't say is a feature either.)

Another annoying feature is that the CPU ships have access to all the weapons, including the ones that they weren't allowed to use in Wipeout XL/Wip3out. I've lost many races because five or six trailing enemy ships decided to release Quake at the same time, and there's no defence; you lose. Ditto with Gravity Bomb or some of the other area-effect weapons. The enemy ships also have eyes in the back of their heads, as they're amazingly skilled at blocking your ship.

None of this would matter so much except for the structure of the league races, where losing one race can make all the difference between earning an overall first place finish and not--and you have to come in first to advance. I'm also not that thrilled with the whole credit system for upgrading ships, as it just requires playing the league series over and over and over and over...blah.

Finally...it just doesn't feel anything like the originals. The physics are strikingly different; it's almost a totally different game than the first two. I also miss the Designers Republic influence on the game, and I'm totally missing the point about the big heads (er, sorry,pilots), as there's no real personality behind them. And why would anyone find looking at preliminary sketches of the artwork interesting? That's a pretty crummy extra.

In short: it feels about 3/4 finished. I hate to judge it against the first two, because of course it's allowed to be its own game, but I'd give it about 50% for the effort. They should've called it something other than Wipeout, and really finished the game before releasing it.