Review
Played on: PlayStation 2 & PCSX2
Released: 2000
Launch titles are often underestimated. Either by being judged as rushed, lacking content or quickly looking dated as consoles gain their stronger titles after launch. At least that was common back in the days when each generation brought brand new, unstandardised, hardware with strengths and quirks. Understanding the hardware took time.
However, some of these launch titles when looked upon in hindsight show strengths that we didn't quite consider at the time. Look at how solid wipEout and Destruction Derby were at launch for the PS1, brand new titles both, or even the port of the first Ridge Racer stands tall to this date.
One underestimated launch title for the PS2 was Wild Wild Racing. Don't worry, you're forgiven for completely missing it. The only reason I still remember it was the Demo CD I received alongside my PS2 had a playable demo of it:
I recall thinking it was quite fun to drive, but dismissed it as I'd bought the PS2 a year into launch as a Gran Turismo 3 bundle. Judging a launch title up against GT3 was never going to do any game a favour and, to be fair, off-road racers have often been a hit and a miss. Years have passed, but I was recently reminded by its existence, thus I decided to finally play Wild Wild Racing properly.
Let's take a closer look!
Wild Wild Racing follows a simple layout, typical of its day for racers compared to the massive releases of modern times; there's Quick Race, Championship, Time Attack and Challenge to choose from on the main menu. Quick Race allows you to set up single races; choosing location, weather type and three time of day. A fair variety considering each racetrack looks visually different with weather and daytime choices. Any buggies unlocked will also be available for Quick Race.
Championship consists of three difficulties; Beginner, Amateur and Pro. Not only are the racetracks trickier in each one, but they also open for shortcuts and on the highest difficulty your opponents will use them relentlessly. You need to take chances using the shortcuts, but they have obstacles like trees and slower grip surfaces. Beginner level features three racetracks across world locations, Amateur is four and Pro is spread out over five. You'll need to drive them all to see all the world locations the game has to offer.
Time Attack is self-explanatory, while Challenge mode is a bit more interesting; adding meat to the bone in a rather slim number of championships and racetracks. Here you take on various challenges like collecting the letters of new buggy names within a time limit, thus unlocking it, then there's stuff like stunt, hit-the-ball-in-goal and time challenges to unlock better engines and stats for each buggy.
The Challenge mode has a purpose too; a way to unlock new buggies and engines for the Pro championship. Otherwise, you won't stand a chance against the harder CPU driven racers with the way they take benefit from shortcuts which require a powerful buggy.
In addition to all this, there's a multiplayer splitscreen to compete with a friend in, which should've been a four player to reel in those wonderful multiplayer moments we adored back in the day. That's the fault with the PS2; it didn't feature four controller ports like the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, as a result even launch titles set the benchmark of mostly two player splitscreen.
Gameplay is surprisingly solid with more nuisance than expected, hitting that sweet spot between realism and arcade. In a far more prominent form than the norm, braking will hard lock the wheels and steering dramatically. Brake with care, ease them up and reapply, there's no ABS to help you out here! Should you end up sliding too far in the wrong direction you can always hit the handbrake to force that backend to slide out.
It's quite challenging keeping your buggy going straight with all the uneven surfaces and jumps too, there's a significant amount of power needed to climb steep hills and passing bumps in the road. Thus, losing your momentum when you need power and speed is punishing. It makes you take more notice of where you should drive and place you buggy on the wide racetrack.
More challenging yet; hills really affect the buggy performance and you'll need momentum to climb them. Braking or stopping in a steep hill can be fatal, forcing your wheels to spin and climb extremely slow in a low gear. All these nods to realism give the game a deeper racing sensation that what I was expecting. It's not a racer about speed, but rather about car placement and technique across the terrain.
Sadly the environment feedback is sparse on the rather flat looking ground where the wheels aren't visually dug in, but it at least gives the sensation of off-roaders struggling across various surfaces. There's just a tiny dust cloud when spinning on grass, mud or sliding on icy surfaces. A sequel to this game with more visible terrain being thrown about the buggy would've been amazing!
As I mentioned, the visuals are on the simpler side compared to later racers on the system and it sadly isn't 60fps like many racers were in that generation. That said, it doesn't suffer as much from the visible jaggies and uneven image quality many titles on the PS2 suffered from in the early days. I played it both on emulator, where these screenshots are from, and on a PS2 connected to a CRT. The latter still left my impression with the image quality being a clean and sharp presentation.
The vehicles are fun buggy styled off-roaders with some modest shiny bodywork going on, visible engine parts and good animation on the suspension bouncing the wheels. The buggies have a beefier polygon geometry compared to the generation that preceded it. The red trails behind the brake lights are a neat touch lended from Ridge Racer Type 4!
It compensates some the simplicity through it's clean visuals and varies the environments up enough with weather and daytime for an acceptable package. Although it has a fairly muted colour scheme, it utilises it the best it can and has a rough, outdoors look to it which fits the off-road genre nicely. They racetracks are very wide with alternate routes and lots of elevation to make them interesting.
Although a launch title like Ridge Racer V is prettier, albeit with tons more jaggies, and later rally titles on the PS2 have more visuals effects going on, I feel this has aged well into a minimalist approach to the off-road genre.
Music is a suitable upbeat electronic soundtrack which goes well with the era it released and fits the racing genre well, accompanied by an eager commentator for each race to give it that arcade charm.
Sure, it has a limited set of environment variation and racetrack layouts, and yes, it looks less impressive than later racers on the system. However, for a slower paced, more technique driven off-roader, Wild Wild Racing offers a neat and varied package for a handful of hours of solid gameplay. Back in the day this would've been a perfect weekend rental title if that's something to rate it by.
It's also a nice deviation from rally racers on the system too, this isn't really about that; it's off-road buggies on wide racetracks where the challenge is trying to keep a stable speed over challenging terrain and steep climbs. It's less about how incredibly fast you can drive, and more about how conquer the terrain and elevations.
Sometimes launch titles get it right; straight to the point, just enough content and an entertaining new take on gameplay taking advantage of new hardware. Pulling of something that sits well even years after, Wild Wild Racing hits this on the nail, go check it out!
