Not a WipEout Clone

Have you played WipEout on the PS2? It rocked and WipEout was put to sleep by SCE with the very last installment being WipEout 2048 on the PS Vita. Now here’s a chance for someone to recycle the series into iOS fodder but Pixelbite seems to have missed the point.

I love the whole WipEout series. I bought in on the PSP and got it on the PS3 too. That said, I didn’t hesitate to download Repulze in the hope it was a clone of a good gravity racer.

Man was I mistaken. First and formost, Repulze may LOOK like WipEout but doesn’t play like it at all. The control is limited to onscreen left to right (or by tilting your iDevice which is not recommended due to the limited scope of your turning radius) and boosting is done by going through these colored gates. You need to collect a number of them to get a boost.

Then there is the gameplay. There are NO competitors! This is a pure TT race (TT being a Time Trial) and you don’t bump fenders with any opposing team. So this also means, no weapons to pick up to blow away the opposition.

Crashing is optional of course and should you do it too many times (which happens to be quite often) you get a time penalty handed to you. So in order to get through this game, you will need among other talents, clairvoyance, to get by those nasty turns.

The graphics are cool, that much I must admit. It looks the part and plays smoothly too. But beyond this shell, there isn’t much that will compel you play on, except maybe when you want to beat your friend’s score posted on the time standings.

Once you get past the spiffy graphics, you will find it hard to motivate yourself to do anything on the game. The controls don’t always work out and regardless of your need for an adrenaline rush, you will not be rewarded with the same thrills of say playing the real WipEout on a PSP for that matter.

 

Conclusion

Is there life on Mars? I think you’d be better off pondering such questions than playing the game. Repulze offers limited thrills and repeat gameplay. The only motivation is to challenge your friend’s time on different tracks if you have a friend to play with.

The idea behind a TT gravity racer has been done before, Repulze is just a repackaged version of the same thing. You’d probably marvel at the effort of putting the whole game together but beyond that. I can’t think of a reason to buy this game except when it cost only 0.99 cents.

Not a WipEout Clone

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