GOONL!NE

Developer: Studio Liverpool
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Also on: N/A [PS3 exclusive]
Console played on: PLAYSTATION 3
Release Date: Thursday July 23rd

Expansions.

We’ve done story related expansions, which give back some life to a story which you’ll have played to death over and over again. But what about them gameplay related expansions, which add either so much or so little new life to a game? With Fury recently coming out for Wipeout HD, announced at E3 in June, does this new expansion add something to Wipeout HD as it is?

No. It adds so much more.

At £7.99, in some respects, it’s like getting a brand new game. An new look to the UI (along with a new look in the XMB), new music track’s, the abillty to change gameplay HUD’s to that of previous Wipeout’s from the past. But much, much more importantly, there is 12 brand new tracks, half a dozen new races added to the campaign (80 to be specific) and a shitload of brand new gameplay modes.

When you boot up HD for the first time after downloading Fury, which comes in at a staggering 700MB, and go for the campaign bit for the game, you have two choices. To your left, you can pick events from Fury. And to your right, if there is any stuff leftover, you can pick races from the main HD game. As for the new gameplay modes themselves, these are what brings Fury back to it’s roots and why so much love for the expansion has been poured into it.

First gameplay mode is Eliminator, a fan favourite mode from Wipeout Pulse on the PSP. Simply put, you gain points by raking up the kills on all your rivals. But this ain’t just your average mode. To win, you must rack up 200 points by taking on your fellow racers, racing across the line in laps doesn’t do the trick here. Not to worry if you get too far ahead to even take down your rival drivers, a tap of the L1 button switches the position of your ship. There, you can wait till your rivals come flying by before you attack. Even if one of your competitors gets a weapon ahead of you, you can still get a weapon instantly afterwards.

Truth be told, Eliminator is my favourite mode from Fury, it’s quite enjoyable It’s not down to the fact it’s not a mode built specifically for racing, it’s more due to the fact that I can take on these other ships, fuck them up and not worry about how many laps I have to do before trying to get 1st.

Secondly, there is Detonator. It’s Zone, but only with an added twist as you try to go through a circuit in Zone with Mines in place. Luckully, there are pads across the place which let you build up an EMP boost bar. Once reached at a certain stage, you can build it up to detonate and destroy the mines, although you can keep continuing to build it up until it can no more so you can have less mines in your way. More of a leaderboard type single player player game, it can be highly addictive. It does take time to adjust to, but once you do, you’ll be going in no time. It’s very, very addictive.

Finally, you get Zone Mode. Pretty much like a normal race, but it’s alot more then that. Its a mode which isn’t standard racing or weapons. Oh, you do have pads there to build up a special bar, which gives you a special boost.

Once the boost is activated, your basically in a race with environments from Zone being used. Other then the change of environment, it’s still the same mode. You keep going and going with the boosts until you reach a certain point and win. But beware, it’s not as simple as that though, there will be Zone barriers left about the track to try and slow you down as you go about and do your thing, so you may wanna watch your step there.

Overall: Fury is absolutely worth all of it’s £7.99. Wipeout HD was a great game when it came out last September (review here), but it’s now even better thanks to this brand new expansion.

Graphically, it’s still the same, but thats no bad thing. The brand new UI looks quite smashing to behold with, one of the small things I like with the expansion.

But more importantly, the brand new gameplay modes add much more life to the game, simply making this expansion a fine one, and one worth buying at that.