Why Ridge Racer Accelerated for the iPhone is a Piece of Shit
UPDATE TO THIS REVIEW POSTED BELOW!
I’m what you might call a fan of Ridge Racer. I’ve played nearly every Ridge Racer game, with the exception of a few of the arcade machines (because I live in Finland), Ridge Racer 64 (because I never bought any games for my Nintendo 64) and Ridge Racer 7 (because I don’t own a PlayStation 3). I was instantly interested in the first Ridge Racer game when I first saw it in a magazine, and fell in love with it when I saw it at a department store.
Now, I didn’t actually play any of the games before the year 2000, which is the year when I got my first PlayStation. But when I got that console, I decided to get every damn Ridge Racer game that was available for it. I played Ridge Racer Type 4 the most, and even wrote a little strategy guide for myself on how to get every car by finishing in certain positions in a certain order. I even used some obscure app to rip the music from the game, which was in some weird format some PS1 games used.
The first Ridge Racer and Ridge Racer Revolution also got a fair share of my attention. I loved the music in those games so much that I had to rip those songs as well. Rage Racer was never a favorite of mine, mostly because it was ugly, had music I didn’t like and the courses weren’t much fun. Ridge Racer DS was a direct port of the N64 version and was fairly terrible, but I finished it anyway. I’ve played a shitload of Ridge Racer 6 on the Xbox 360, and completed both Ridge Racer games on the PSP.
So yeah, you might call me a fan.
This explains why I was excited to see the announcement of Ridge Racer Accelerated on the iPhone. My favorite racing game series on my favorite mobile device! Generally, I think racing games on the iPhone are terrible. Some games, such as Real Racing, are pretty good. They look nice, and the tilt controls work well. But that’s the exception. Some games just require buttons, especially racing games.
I wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that Ridge Racer Accelerated is a complete fucking piece of shit. It’s ugly, the controls are terrible (even worse than many racing games on the iPhone, which is quite a fucking feat in itself), and Namco is continuing it’s proud tradition of selling a lot of game content as DLC. Seriously, there are two courses in the game. The rest have to be bought as DLC. Of course, the game is just a few bucks, but still. Two courses. And the controls. The controls are so bad that when I get to the first corner and start drifting, I just laugh a bit and quit the game instantly.
The game is so bad that it just makes me angry. If you want a good game for your iPhone, just get Orba and forget all the racing games. For a good portable Ridge Racer game, get Ridge Racer 2 for the PSP. Ridge Racer Accelerated is not worth a fucking penny.
UPDATE: The 1.1 update added digital controls, which makes the game playable, and quite fun to play. So forget the criticism about the controls! It’s still pretty ugly, and there aren’t a lot of tracks and cars you can race without paying for some DLC. Still, now it’s playable.
