Wipeout 2048 Review

Sony’s Wipeout franchise has been dazzling gamers since the original PlayStation. It came as no surprise that the company decided to release a launch title – Wipeout 2048 – alongside the PlayStation Vita. Can Wipeout hold up as a handheld title? Most certainly!

Curiously the game starts with a video showing automotive racing history from the tube-like early classic racing cars to more modern Formula 1 racing cars. Of course the Wipeout series takes place in the future and as the name of the title implies, it is actually the near-future. Apparently floating cars are roughly forty years away.

The racing in Wipeout 2048 takes place over a single-player campaign consisting of three seasons. The seasons have individual races which branch off in a honeycomb-like fashion between the core races that need to be completed in order to advance and optional side races. Unfortunately all of this only takes a few hours to complete.

That is not to say that Wipeout 2048 is an easy game, though. Wipeout has a history of building players up to more advanced levels. You will start off easily clearing courses, even earning an elite pass, but the difficulty level ramps up as you enter your second season. Events that you are not particularly good at will probably need to be replayed multiple times.

Speaking of events Wipeout 2048 has a decent variety. Aside from your straight-up race where in order to pass you will need to simply finish a certain rank, there are also more challenging modes that they throw at you. Among them are time trials and combat events where you score based on your offensive rather than racing skills.

My personal favorite are the Zone events. Your vehicle constantly increases in speed and all you have to do is control the direction that it is moving while avoiding the walls. These are highly stylized, visually stimulating events. It reminds me of something along the lines of TRON.

The online multi-player allows you to join races against other PlayStation Vita owners as well as PS3 players. The tracks come from Wipeout HD, which is pretty cool. I like the idea of cross-play functionality, but it also comes with a one-time use online code.

I have to say that the graphics are quite impressive. You are getting console-quality visuals, lightning fast gameplay and very cool-looking race tracks to choose from. The framerate is not as good as the PS3 version, but what do you really expect? I was also impressed with the soundtrack which features fourteen songs.

As a fan of the Wipeout series I walked away feeling pretty good about 2048. The single-player is short and sweet with a decent amount of replay value from trying to earn an elite pass in each event. The multi-player is where most of your extra time will be spent. While I am not going to say that it is a “must-have” launch title, Wipeout fans will not be disappointed.