Ridge Racer 6

While most racing games tend to be carbon copies of one another, using the same cars and with the handling feeling the exact same in each, there are those games that branch off and try to use their own unique feel. They can either crash or burn or offer an incredibly fun experience. The Ridge Racer series has always tended to lean towards the latter, and Ridge Racer 6 for the Xbox 360 follows a similar pattern.

Although it began its life as a successful arcade game, Ridge Racer was soon ported over to consoles and saw similar success. Gamers ate up the fast-paced racing action and thoroughly enjoyed the unique handling of the vehicles that the game offered. While many racers tend to try to be realistic, Ridge Racer 6 takes gamers near the edge of speed and allows them to reach a fast-paced, high intensity level that many racers never attempt to go.

The whole enjoyment factor of Ridge Racer is in how unrealistic the game truly is, yet designed perfectly so that it is so much fun. Most of the game involves racing at incredibly high speeds with very little actual control on the road. Big turns involve massive spin outs and losses of control that send the vehicle into violent spins that one would never hope to survive through in the real world. In Ridge Racer, the brakes are the most neglected aspect of the button layout. Really, don’t be a pansy, just leave your foot on the gas.

The challenge of the game is getting good enough to know when to time the turns to get back in control as quickly as possible. There is no doubt you will lose control and whip around, but the trick is to align the vehicle and let the car drift until such a point when you can take control again and reach top speed down the raceway. The challenge is not to beat the curve, but to know how to get through the curve without completely losing yourself along the way.

Also included is the nitrous boost, allowing gamers to unleash their boost and get to top speed even faster. The real trick here is that more nitrous is gained by handling the curves better and at higher speeds. So essentially, the more skilled you are at handling the curves, the more nitrous you will get and the better you will be able to gain speed following the slowdown inevitable caused by the hairpin turns.

The main knock against Ridge Racer is the repetitiveness of the tracks. There really aren’t that many in the game, and despite the fact that you may be able to take a slightly different course on a map or even go backwards, the fact that it is still the same map lingers in the back of the mind. This repetitiveness can be defeated by focusing on the enjoyment the game offers, but it is still quite annoying that more maps weren’t included to be raced on.

As is a trend with almost all the Xbox 360 games, Ridge Racer 6 comes complete with a few multiplayer modes. Gamers can go split-screen with friends on the same TV and engage in exciting racers or hook up to Xbox Live and jump into a race online and experience the high speeds and crazy turns with the best of ’em. If you enjoy the game, the number of modes will offer plenty of reason to come back for more.

Ridge Racer 6 turns out to be a very solid racer for the Xbox 360. Although it might not be remembered as one of the Xbox 360 greats, it still offers enough enjoyment so that fans of racing titles should definitely consider picking this game up. The single player lasts long enough to provide hours of enjoyment and the Xbox Live and offline multiplayer components greatly increase that number.