Rage Racer

Alternate recording showing a more accurate run of the game even though it now 4 times more repetitive now

Third game in the Ridge Racer series and to me, it is the weakest of the series. The game revolves around pretty much one track containing 4 circuits. There are 6 speed classes you have to progress though over the same 4 courses in forward and reverse so there is plenty of game, but it does get repetitive.

Graphicaly it looks like they have taken the original ridge racer engine as far as it can go and there is a massive difference in fidelity when they made Type 4. The music soundtrack is not really arcade style and I guess that's why they called it Rage Racer to get away from being an arcade game and play like a home console game. This notion is further enforced by the notion of earning money by winning racers and buying faster cars which wouldn't make sense in an arcade game. One aspect I do like is the woooosh sound when you get close to walls oh and the day and night transitions, although the lack of car lighting is a dampener.

Speaking of walls, that's probably one of the games biggest downsides. It is far to easy to hit or clip the walls. There could be an inch between the wall and your car, but because the collision detection boundary seems to extend past the wall, the game often says you hit it and punishes you even when you were not even close to it. This also makes Chase view pretty much an impossible mode to ride with as the slight angle the camera goes on when you near a corner means you cant judge it properly and can either under steer or over steer and hot the invisible wall and mess up your lap.

I pretty much play with Grip car and Grip tyres all the way through the game as I find the game far to unforgiving with drift setting, especially at faster speeds, Anytime you drift, they is a huge chance you will get locked into an uncontrollable drift and lose to much speed and stall the car. It is really annoying when this happens in a drift car and is pretty much suicide in a drift car as you will encounter uncontrollable drift more often especially in the faster classes. yeah, I didn't really enjoy this game.

One final thing. You can just stick to one car and you do need to buy the faster (max speed) cars in order to beat the Extreme oval rounds. I don't really like this mechanic that forces you into a specific car purchase in order to progress the game. It hurts more if you spent all your money on the wrong car and have to win races all over again to afford the correct car.

So a break down of this video. I play through all 5 classes in the main gp and unlock all the gold trophies there. I then play through 5 reverse classes in the extra GP which unlocks the final forward 6th class. After beating this and completing the game I show all the trophies and then go back into gp mode. (Note the re-coloured title screen). After beating the game I am awarded with maximum money to spend as I like, more money than you can possible spend which I use to show all the fully upgraded cars. Finally when saving the game you will see a time mismatch. This due to chopping out a couple of races where I only raced to gain money to upgrade the cars in order to progress through the class and win.

For the first 10 tracks I make sure to select the music in order to make sure they are all shown. I also show full replays after each race (its just one lap)

00:00:00 Intro and Class 1 Calme GP (3 tracks)
00:24:55 - Class 2 Brise GP (3 tracks)
00:46:20 - Class 3 Rafale GP (4 Tracks)
01:12:05 - Class 4 Mistral GP (4 Tracsk)
01:36:10 - Class 5 Tempete GP (4 Tracks)

02:01:00 - Reverse Class 1 Aisance GP (3 Tracks)
02:24:23 - Reverse Class 2 Agitation GP (3 Tracks
02:44:45 - Reverse Class 3 Irritation GP (4 Tracks)
03:10:00 - Reverse Class 4 Colere GP (4 Tracks)
03:33:40 - Reverse Class 5 Rage GP (4 Tracks)
03:56:15 - Forward Class 6 Diable GP (4 Tracks)

04:19:25 - Game Beaten. Show all trophies and buy all car upgrades to show all final car models.