Ridge Racer DS (Nintendo DS) Review

Ridge Racer DS is, obviously, a game with some heritage behind it. The first Ridge Racer spawned some ten years ago on the Playstation, and the series has worked its way between consoles ever since. By sheer weight of numbers, there's a good chance that you have experienced Ridge Racer before, whether it be on the N64 or the XBox. I, however, have managed to sidestep all Ridge Racer activity until now, with the DS.

Upon turning the DS on with the correct cartridge properly inserted into the right hole, I am presented with a nice little intro movie with some spinny graphics and ample cleavage. It's not Metroid Prime: Hunters, but it's nice enough. So, onwards into the game for my first ever taste of Ridge Racing. I'm with a friend, so I decide to set up a little one cart multiplayer. This proves to be as easy as always, and with six players from one cartridge it's one of RR DS's most advertised features.

The immediately noticeable thing is the music. Saying that the music in Ridge Racer DS is bad is a bit like saying that the United States of America are well off. Admittedly, I haven't listened to every track on the game. You try sitting all the way through persistent, tapping irritation of Revolver. The second noticeable thing is the fact that the acceleration button doesn't seem to make you accelerate. This is because in Ridge Racer DS, you have to time your first button press to the nanosecond. If you leave it too late, you just skid around on the start line a bit and the commentator mocks you before you start moving. Press it too early and you just skid around on the start line a bit and the commentator mocks you before you start moving.

The satisfaction of pulling off a perfect drift is something special. The same applies for so many techniques in so many racing games, but because so much of the game treats you so unfairly, there's a kick of satisfaction over and above that of simply winning that comes with overtaking three opponents on one bend with a neatly placed Acceleration Drift that hugs the edge of the road and straightens out at the end into the straight like a bolt of lightening. On the other hand, a Drift that goes awry, say an over-zealous one on a shallow corner that swings around the road like a pendulum rather than gripping the tarmac, is ultimately infuriating.

The controls for Ridge Racer are an interesting affair. Much like Mario 64 DS, Ridge Racer DS has opted for three control schemes. However, rather than just making the control schemes different to suit different players, Namco have taken the odd decision to make the controls in easy, hard and expert flavours. Easy mode uses the D-pad for steering, hard mode uses the stylus and expert mode uses the wrist strap. The presumed implication of this is that the harder control methods yield better results, but instead they just make the game stupidly hard, and increase the amount of crashing going on. The AI is similarly uninspiring, with the other cars on the track taking corners without drifting, and managing to do so without losing any speed at all. This means that at no point do you feel that you're racing against other people, or that a particular car has it in for you. Instead, the difficulty introduced by the enemy AI comes mostly from the sub-par collision detection, as every scrape sends you backwards a few metres, when you expect just to trade some paint and scrape past the opponent.