Ridge Racer 6 is Cool, Nothin' Special

After playing through about half the races in the career mode of the game I feel like I can safely give a well informed review of the game. Basically, the title of this post says it all. The game is fun and features some reasonably interesting levels and cool cars. Also, as it is made by Namco I have an affinity towards it because Namco puts a certain tone to their games that I like, can't describe it, it's just smooth and nice. However, the game is lacking in a few areas...actually, I find most racing games that I've played are lacking in these areas. Firstoff, when did it become okay to have multiple versions of the same levels over and over again? I find myself recognizing the same sections of maps thrown into other levels to make them more challenging. Instead of entirely new maps for each race (I wouldn't even mind if they just had a new set of courses for every, say, 20 races) you get a medley of courses that you've already played as the game progresses. This makes the game rather repetetive and I find myself not dying to play it anymore after a couple days of putting in a good amount of game-time. However, on the plus side, I found a way to shut up the annoying "DJ" who constantly comments on your racing in a voice that can only be described as "Xtremely Awesome to the Max". Comments such as "whoa dude you got some craaaazy skills!" and "here comes some craaaazy nitrous!"(things are very crazy in the Ridge Racer universe) fly at you throughout each race. Upon further inspection of the options I found that there are 3 volume settings, sound effects, BGM, and DJ. DJ was promptly placed at 0 and that was the last I had to deal with that.

Here come's some craaaazy nitrous!

I have yet to try racing against my friends but I'm assuming that'll be fun. This leads me to my second problem which is that I don't think I have the patience to unlock all of the cars. So, any versus matches with my friends will be limited to whatever I've unlocked so far. Most of the cars I've unlocked seem to be variations on the same models, only differing in paint jobs, not even performance. That's boring. I haven't delved into the online racing situation yet either, more on that later...maybe.

When do I unlock THIS car, huh!?

I think next time I go for a racing game it's gonna be Project Gotham or something that features stages that are a bit more colorful and interesting. Looking at the same mountain ranges and green and red lit tunnels gets boring after a while. I need more interesting cars and more interesting stages. And goddamnit, Xbox needs to accept my iPod, because while the game features a setting to put your own soundtrack to the game, my iPod is not recognized, probably because it is Mac OS formatted or something. What a buncha jerks.

All pictures taken from http://www.ign.com/

Thanks guys, don't sue me.