I don’t normally go for racing games that don’t have at least one of the two following qualities: a futuristic setting or weapons. However, after taking Ridge Racer for a spin through a couple of races, I really want to like it.

RIDGE RACER ACCELERATED ($2.99)

The visuals are some of the best I’ve seen in a racer that doesn’t take place on another planet, and the tracks are laid out nicely. However, the shoddy controls make the game less than fun to play, and the lack of substance you get with the initial purchase make me despise the whole in-app purchase concept even more than I already did.

Presentation

The visuals are actually the highlight of the game. The tracks are nicely detailed, and surprisingly there appears to be no clipping issues, at least not that I’ve run into so far. As you get close to objects you don’t notice the images getting pixilated like you do in so many other racers, and objects like billboards actually look like they have stuff on them instead of just being flat two color planes that just simulate a billboard. The only thing that kind of bugs me is this little circle that pops up every once in a while that looks like something from a top down view of the 80’s version of Pole Position. I’m not really sure what its purpose is, and it seems so out of place with the rest of the visuals.

The main sound effect is your revving engine. Whether for good or bad there is no annoying scraping when you drag against the walls or rails (which I did a lot). You also don’t get the satisfaction of any sort of explosions, since this isn’t one of THAT kind of game. The music is an entirely different breed of odd. The song for the first track is some weird combination of soft porn and b-rated Japanese rubber monster movie. I don’t even know how to describe the song for track two, other than the fact that there’s clapping and some words sung from time to time. I’m pretty sure you can listen to your own music, but I was disappointed given that one thing you can usually rely on from a racing game is decent tunes.

Controls

If you didn’t gather from the overview, I don’t like the controls. They’re actually quite simple in theory. You can have acceleration by automatic, or you can use a little on screen pedal to control your speed. I chose automatic, because I figured that would be one less thing I had to worry about. To brake you have an on screen pedal as well, but braking hardly seems like an option when racing against perfect drivers, even on the easy level. If you opt for a car with manual transmission, you’ll also have buttons to shift up and shift down.

Finally there’s steering itself. You tilt the device to steer, if you call what you can do steering, and unless I missed something you have no option on this one. You can tell the calibration is bad when the bar that shows whether you’re “turning” the wheel left or right jitters even if you’re holding the device perfectly still. When you try to take turns you’ll spend a good portion of your time either hugging the wall or sliding sideways, even if you turn early. Of course you can brake, but my past comment on that still stands. Overall they really need to clean up the steering in order to make this game reasonably playable.

Game Play

Well, as you can imagine give that this is a racing game, the main goal is to race and win. There are three modes to the game: Arcade, Duel and Survival. Arcade is your standard racing mode, where you compete against eleven other drivers and try to take first place. I’ll assume at this point that there’s a circuit mode to this, but I can’t verify that since I’ve never taken better than fourth in a race. I would like to mention that there are 10 courses in the game, two of which are locked and six of which must be purchased separately. So basically if you’re no better at this game than I am, be prepared for a selection of a whopping two courses. Anyway, back to the various game modes.

Duel is a one on one race with another driver. This mode is okay, but it’s really just a boring version of Arcade mode. Survival mode is actually kind of interesting. In this mode you have 3 competitors, and after each lap the person in last place gets dropped from the race. I actually find this mode appealing conceptually, but once again I can never take higher than fourth place, so you can imagine where that thought is going. To compete in these races you can choose from three classes of car, each class containing nine cars. Of course, just like with the courses, there are an awful lot of locks and shopping carts covering the cars, which means out of 27 possible cars you can only race with six before either doing well or shelling out some more cash.

That’s really all there is to the game, at least as far as I’ve been able to uncover. There are no upgrade mechanisms or anything like that. Still, there’s a lot of potential to the game, if only they could get the whole steering thing in line.

Suggestions

Fix the steering. Seriously. I can’t play enough of the game otherwise to really suggest anything else. I suppose a secondary thought might be to offer a few more items with the initial purchase. Most other racers I’ve played on the iPhone offer more for your initial cash outlay.

Conclusion

I really feel like there’s a good game trapped inside here somewhere. The visuals are sweet, and I like the whole concept of the Survival mode. Some better music would be nice, but you can always turn that off when it gets on your nerves.

Unfortunately, none of this matters too much if the game doesn’t control well, and from my experience the game doesn’t control well. If they get that minor issue fixed I could see this becoming a guilty pleasure of mine, but until then I’ll stick to some of the futuristic racers. At least there I can blow things up when I can’t win.