Latest news with #WipEout
Metro
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
PS1 classic WipEout gets unofficial Xbox release
A famous PlayStation exclusive has been ported to Xbox and Sony are going to be furious when they find out about it. While Xbox exclusives, like Sea Of Thieves and the upcoming Gears Of War remaster, are finding a new home on the PlayStation 5, that doesn't mean Sony intends to return the favour. Microsoft's multiplatform push has clearly been in response to the Xbox Series X/S's dwindling sales. At the same time, PlayStation 5 sales are still increasing, in the US at least, so there's zero chance of seeing the likes of God Of War or The Last Of Us on an Xbox platform. And yet an old PlayStation favourite, WipEout, is currently available for purchase from the Xbox store… and it's clearly not happened with Sony's permission. The game has actually been available on the Xbox store since April, where it's listed as Anti-Gravity Racing Wipeout and is being sold for £14.99. At a first glance, it seems like it's just a spiritual follow-up; something meant to resemble WipEout but is still an original product. Upon learning of its existence, though, Digital Foundry took one for the team and actually bought it, discovering that, no, it's just WipEout. As in the original PlayStation game. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. More specifically, it's a badly emulated version of WipEout, one that has stretched out menus and Xbox buttons awkwardly placed over where the PlayStation buttons would be. The game also includes WipEout 3 (entitled Anti-Gravity Racing Special Edition) and even warns you not to try and run it on a 2013 model of the Xbox One. Digital Foundry accepted the challenge and can confirm that it runs terribly. They ran direct comparisons with the original PlayStation games and while they are by and large identical, some adjustments have been made to these emulated duplicates. More Trending For instance, the emulated WipEout is the PAL version released in the UK. To compensate for running on our 50Hz TVs, developer Psygnosis adjusted the speed so it would match the NTSC version released in the US. However, the emulated version bumps it up to 60Hz, which means the game runs faster than it should. All references to Psygnosis have also been scrubbed from the game, although all the (un-)licensed music seems to be intact. If you needed any further evidence that this Xbox release isn't legitimate, the developer and publisher of Anti-Gravity Racing Wipeout is listed as LLS Games. With more attention being drawn to it, the game will likely be removed from the Xbox store, especially if Sony decides to send in the lawyers. Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: WipEout Omega Collection review – the past of the future of racing MORE: Xbox Game Pass has been 'damaging the industry for a decade' says Arkane founder MORE: Xbox is being set up to fail by Microsoft bosses, claims insider
Metro
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Fast Fusion review - 4K and 60fps on the Nintendo Switch 2
Fast Fusion – not F-Zero but it'll have to do (Shin'en) Nintendo might not want to make a new F-Zero game but the creators of Fast RMX do, with a sequel that has some of the best graphics on Switch 2. Much has been said about how Nintendo is in a slightly awkward position with the Switch 2, in that most of its major franchises were so expertly revamped and perfected on the Switch 1 that it's hard to know where to go with them from here. Do they try to reimagine Zelda once again? Or make Smash Bros. even bigger in scale? Or do they continue with more iterative and less ambitious sequels? Or maybe they should focus on other forgotten franchises… like F-Zero. Nintendo's explanation for why there hasn't been a new F-Zero in over two decades (except for online title F-Zero 99) is that there's no point unless they can come up with something new for it, especially as it's never been a big seller, that can get by on just its name. As the inspiration for WipEout, F-Zero is the quintessential future racer and its greatest entry is GameCube title F-Zero GX, which technically is a Switch 2 launch title, as it's now available as part of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. But if you crave something new there is an alternative, in the form of loving tribute Fast Fusion. German developer Shin'en has been making F-Zero clones since the Wii era, all with different names but always starting with word Fast. Fast RMX was a launch title for the original Switch and now we have Fast Fusion, which suffers from all the same pros and cons as the previous titles. As if to make Nintendo's point, there's precious little innovation here but what it does have is a blistering sense of speed and some of the best graphics on the Switch 2. Unlike F-Zero and WipEout, there's very little context given for Fast Fusion's races. Not only is there no attempt at a story, or even any characters, but there's no explanation for what's going on or where you are. The implication is that you're taking part in a futuristic racing championship but there's zero worldbuilding, beyond some vaguely sci-fi sounding names in the leaderboard. That doesn't really matter though and once in a race you can instantly see where all the effort has gone, with some really quite stunning visuals for a launch game. Mario Kart World's cartoon style has made it difficult to gauge exactly how powerful the Switch 2 is, but Fast Fusion frequently looks like a higher end PlayStation 4 game, and certainly much better than Fast RMX. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. If you don't know what F-Zero, or WipEout, is then it doesn't matter, because it's not a complex concept: imagine Formula One but in the future, with anti-gravity cars and roller coaster style tracks, and that's pretty much it. WipEout had weapons and power-ups, but F-Zero and Fast Fusion do not. Instead, Fast Fusion has a boost that is, slightly counter-intuitively, activated by collecting enough coins to fill up a bar. But you can also get a boost from driving over differently coloured chevrons, while manually switching colours between red and blue, so as to match the colour on the ground – or otherwise you slow down instead of speeding up. There's also a very powerful jump and the ability to lean left and right, but those are more advanced techniques that are not necessary at first. You can knock into enemies, to send them spinning, but there isn't really an attack ability, which is something of a shame because if you or an opponent hit an obstacle you explode in a rather nice crash. Red sky at night, future racer's delight (Shin'en) Although the game has the worst rubber band AI we think we've ever experienced, and the vehicles feel a bit lightweight in terms of handling, races are a lot of fun. The track design can seem a little pedestrian (we've been spoilt by the overabundance of shortcuts in Mario Kart World) but the sheer spectacle of it all keeps your interest. If you're wondering about the name, there is a fusion process, similar to the Shin Megami Tensei series, where you can put two vehicles together, to fuse them together and get a blend of both their stats and their physical appearance. That's kind of neat but there's only three stats and there's not a lot of thought needed for which ones to splice together. This costs money to do, naturally, but while the standard game mode is similar to the Grand Prix system from Mario Kart you have to pay to unlock subsequent cups, which we wish we'd known the first time, before we spent all our money on new cars and fusions. Although it's a regular irritation when you have to repeat a whole cup, or waste time in Time Attack, just to earn a few more credits to play a new one. There's also Super Hero mode, where if you crash that's it (it's basically iron man mode, in other words). That's as frustrating as it sounds and so too, unfortunately, is the online multiplayer. There's up to four-player split screen, which is great, but there's no matchmaking for online so you either race with a friend via GameChat or… you don't race online at all. Again, it all comes back to the visuals, with 12 highly varied tracks that range from a redwood forest to deserts with sand whales jump out around you, to a race in an asteroid belt and around a futuristic city. There are four separate graphics options in TV mode, two of which are 4K, although this results in a slight blurriness that we assume is a result of upscaling rather than being a native resolution – so we stuck with the performance option, although only the Ultra Quality option is not 60fps. Fast Fusion is rough around the edges in almost every respect and, apart from its graphics, shows little real improvement over its eight-year-old predecessor. Its low price excuses a lot of its problems but at the same time it fails to address Nintendo's problem, of how to introduce new concepts to the formula. And yet between this and the GameCube games on Switch 2, this is a good as F-Zero fans have eaten in a long time. Fast Fusion review summary In Short: The best F-Zero clone since Fast RMX, with some extremely impressive visuals for a Switch 2 launch game, although the structure and track design lack Nintendo's finesse. Pros: Fantastic graphics, with a ton of options in both TV and portable mode. Solid racing action and dizzying sense of speed, especially in the higher championship levels. Four-player split screen and surprisingly cheap. Cons: The track design lacks flair and the championship structure is very irritating. Outrageously cheating rubber band AI. Vehicle fusion adds very little and online multiplayer is extremely limited. Score: 7/10 Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 Price: £13.49 Publisher: Shin'en Developer: Shin'en Release Date: 5th June 2025 Age Rating: 3 The graphics are really great (Shin'en) Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. 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