R4: Ridge Racer Type 4

THE BAD:
Unlocking some cars is very difficult
2 player mode is pretty limited

SUMMARY:
This game never really gathered too much attention and while it was nothing spectacular like Gran Tourismo, it did deserve more acclaim than it got. There's a pretty decent campaign mode which is actually probably the game's strongest point. The 2 player mode is ok but not spectacular for reasons I'll go into later. The graphics are pretty good, fairly comparable to Gran Tourismo as you go through the various tracks and scenary.

When you start your season mode you can choose from 4 teams, each team's cars handle differently. The 4 teams are Micro Mouse Mappy, Pac Racing Team, Racing Team Solvalou and Dig Racing Team. The MMR team are the easiest cars to use, Pac cars are a bit harder, Solvalou cars are harder still and the Dig Racing Team's cars are the hardest. In terms of storyline the Dig team is the team that's fallen from grace in a way. Easy team's cars will handle slightly differently and in a way it's basically the difficulty level. There are also 4 manufacturers, 2 for drift style cars and 2 for grip. The drift cars are Assoluto and Lizard and the grip cars are Terrazi and Age Solo. Each manufacturer has an ultimate car that can be unlocked as well. In total there are over 300 cars and the way you unlock some of them is pretty unique.

In the first few races, to progress you've got to come in at least 3rd, then the next few at least 2nd and for the final races you have to win them all. Doing this will unlock you cars as the season progresses, but in order to unlock some cars you've got to not finish in first all the time. Finishing races in 1st all the way through will unlock you different cars to finishing 2nd in the first two stages and 1st in the last. You've got to play around a bit to unlock all the cars, something I never did. The ultimate cars can't be used in the season mode because they're simply way too fast, but they can be used in time trials and in the 2 player mode. I can only remember 2 ultimate cars, one looked like a bullet and the other was a bizarre one. It had only one gear but the most incredible acceleration and could go from 0-300 km/h in under 2 seconds. You had to unlock the ultimate car with each team, so with 4 teams and 4 manufacturers that was 16 ultimate cars. You had to unlock your team's ultimate car with a car from that team and because the Dig team had poor handling, I never was able to unlock the 1 gear car with that team, it was too maneuverable.

One thing that I found really awkward in the game was the way it handled collisions. Just the slightest brush with the wall, even just a glancing blow, would dramatically reduce your speed no matter how the contact was. This was very frustrating, not to mention not entirely realistic, because just the slightest mistake could cost you a lot of time. The main downside to this game was the 2 player. That itself wasn't bad, but you could select up to 2 computer players and they could have one of 3 cars depending on what difficulty you select. But if you used one of the ultimate cars then they basically didn't even come into play, an option to allow the computer players to use one of the 4 ultimate cars would have far increased the replay value of that mode.

But overall this game wasn't too bad, it certainly kept me interested for quite some time, but the lack of options really hurt it long term with only the cars to unlock with the reward of the Pac Man car. I preferred the 1 gear car myself.