I’d just like to point out that I hate Sony. With a passion. The bastards.

You see, I’m a Wipeout fan (the game, not that crap show with Paul Daniels or whoever the feck it was in it). I particularly like the handling engine of 2097, and the track design, as well as the great visuals and stuff (even if the tech is dated, the game in design terms still looks awesome). I won’t mention the original as it was horrifically nasty and I only played it recently anyway.

I’ve tried F-Zero GX but couldn’t get into the handling in that game at all. The loss of grip when boosting felt random at times and the graphics were so over the top…very different game. But very skilful too.

Wipeout 3 added lots of extra weapon fluff and made combat more important, which is the weakest side of the damn game, but also remixed some classic tracks in cool ways, made the game slightly easier to play, and balanced the ships out a little (with the final two being at opposite ends of the speed vs handling scale). And it finally added two player. And the two player was excellent, with plenty of modes.

Then came Fusion, a game that wasn’t even finished. The handling was, to put it simply, crap. I played it a few times on a mates PS2 and that was enough to know that the game was awful. Plus the design was too messy and ‘other gamey’ not as sleak and neat as 2097 or Wipeout 3. The Wipeout ‘feel’ and been polluted with crap from other games.

Then I read of Wipeout Pure in a magazine. For the PSP. And the due sense of dread came in about all the crappy stuff they’d feel they had to put in to make it up to date with F-Zero GX or the bloat of Gran Turismo. I was ready to get all huffy at Sony again for Wipeout Pure, thinking they’d do another Fusion. Good good, I like being huffy. All we game/film/music buffs enjoy being huffy at, say, anything popular or new.

But I read in this issue of Edge the following words from the developers.

“…We’ve gone back to less weapons like the earlier games, and we’ve tried to get the handling back to 2097 – which we thought was head and shoulders above the rest.”

THE BASTARDS. THE COMPLETE BASTARDS.

They are trying to make it decent. They are trying to make exactly the game I want. Now I can’t be huffy and feel superior in my retro tastes. And I’ve gotta buy a PSP.

It’s like id saying that their next new tech game will play exactly like <insert favourite Quake game here> but only be available on the Mac so you’ll have to buy something new to play it, and worst of all: No complaining column or threads (apart from 'omg I've been forced to buy a PC that doesn't crash constantly'). The internet will shut down due to the complete lack of anything to rant over. All those millions of miles of computer cables making up the world wide web will lay wasted as the internet actually enjoy something for once.

I can’t take this anymore.