Ridge Racer 6 Review

The Ridge Racer games have always been known for their fast pace and drift-crazy gameplay and Ridge Racer 6 is no exception. This is Ridge Racer at its absolute finest with tons of cars, lots of races to compete in, gorgeous graphics, great sound, and gameplay that has been fine tuned to near perfection. The game might not be for everyone, but once you get “into” it, Ridge Racer 6 is very enjoyable.

Gameplay

The gameplay in Ridge Racer 6 is classic arcade racing at its best with a heavy dose of drifting thrown into the mix. What has always set the Ridge Racer games apart is that you can head into a corner at full speed, let off the gas for a second and then hit it again, and your car will start a massive powerslide that takes you all the way through the corner. It is almost as if your car is on rails. This is the gameplay mechanic that some race fans don’t agree with, but once you get used to it there is a lot of fun to be had here. It isn’t as if you have no control during these drifts – a careful touch on the throttle is important for straightening out at the end and you have to know when and where to start the slide in order to maintain top speed. As you drift you earn nitrous, so the more drifting you can do the faster you’ll be able to go. With faster cars and tighter tracks late in the game, the game is unbelievably fast and you’ll be whipping around multiple corners all in a row and the beauty of Ridge Racer 6 really shows through.

Features and Modes

There are over 130 cars split into four classes and there are three different drift types for you to master. The cars aren’t licensed, but they all look very cool and many of them are loosely designed after other Namco characters and series and earning one of these unique cars is a special treat.

The main single player mode is called World Explorer and it gives you a spider web of races to pick from and you get to choose your own path through them. There are 230 races in all spread across the 30 tracks so completing the World Explorer mode will keep you busy for a very long time. It is always interesting, though, because you are constantly unlocking better and faster cars which will keep you playing just to see how every last one of them handles on the track. There are also single race and time attack modes for solo play as well.

Once you have had your fill of single player, you can take the game onto Xbox Live and play in ranked or friendly races with up to 14 people. The game defaults to 8 players, but in our tests the game handled the full load of 14 just fine.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Ridge Racer 6 is a great looking game. The car models are all very nice looking and the courses are filled with little off track details and it all looks very good. The game maintains a framerate of close to 60 FPS which really adds to the sense of speed. There are a few blemishes such as so-so road textures and some jagged edges here and there (a sign of Ridge Racer’s PlayStation heritage, I guess …), but it looks very good overall.

The sound is an area where Ridge Racer 6 could have used more work. The engine sounds are unspectacular and get rather annoying over the course of the race and you’ll get sick of hearing your tires squealing while you are drifting. Also, the announcer is obnoxious and repeats the same phrases over and over again. On the plus side, the music is a nice mix of fast paced electronica along with some easier listening tracks and all of it suits the racing perfectly. Or, you can just use custom soundtracks but I recommend giving the RR6 soundtrack a chance first.

Bottom Line

The nice thing about the Xbox 360 launch is that we have quite a lot of variety. Even though there are three racing games, all of them offer very different styles of racing and all three of them are definitely worth playing and owning. Ridge Racer 6 is easily the best Ridge Racer game yet and features a ton of cars and races and tracks which will all keep you busy for a very long time. The drifting “on rails” gameplay might not appeal to everyone, however, so I would suggest renting it first if you aren’t already a Ridge Racer fan. For those of us that “get it”, though, Ridge Racer 6 is a fast, exciting, and huge racing game that is very fun and worth having in your collection.