Yes the graphics are a jaggie mess, but the gameplay mechanics are probably the best in the series. Drifting is so much fun here. It was nice to watch Digital Foundry giving some credit to a game that's easily bashed by it's visuals. I hope it raises the interest of people that never gave it a chance.
Calling PS2 Retro.......I can feel this headache making a comeback. I'm a HUGE Ridge Racer fan and I never really got the chance to play V. It really bothers me that we're 3 years into this supposed Next Gen with SuperGraphix consoles one the way and there hasn't been a Ridge Racer 8 yet.
I really wanted to like 4, I didn't like drifting tho, and if you don't drift you'll lose. The graphics I could tell were good tho.
After the masterpiece of design and style that was RR4, the ps2 game seemed so intentionally loud and in your face, from the obnoxious music to the changed game play. It was a 2/10 for me personally, coming from Ridge racer, Ray tracers, and RR4.
What hurt Rodge Racer V was that it was a much smaller game than R4. R4 was quite a tough act to follow as you could tell Namco poured so much effort into it with its graphics and play modes. I mean there's hours of gameplay in that one. Always watch the intro when I play that one. Now with V had nice graphics but was a much shorter game that didn't feel like it had the substance of R4. On top of that with it being on CD load times were atrocious, though if you play with a DVD back up loading much better. It's a shame Ridge Racer is no longer a staple at launches. 6 and R Racing Evoloution were so disappointing. 7 would make up for this but sadly the series has been dead since then. With realism being such a focus shame arcade racers aren't big anymore.
Type IV was an incredible achievement on the PS1 although for me it got away from the arcade style fun, never played V although I have it somewhere. I also like the Burnout clone RR game on 3DS, that's more what the series is about to me in a weird way even though it's not much like the earlier ones.
Ridge Racer V was one of my first PS2 games, I loved it. I liked the exaggerated glow effect on the brake pads every time you braked and the soundtrack was pretty great. It was a super short game though. I didn't own any of the earlier Ridge Racer games, but I remember the hype for how great R4 was. I remember the hype behind Namco's virtual idol in that game, as well as FF: The Spirit Within's star character. They were supposed to be the future of pop icons or whatever. But I guess that eventually came true with stuff like Hatsune Mika (or maybe some other Japanese stuff I never heard of).
Ridge Racer 5 was deceptively simple. The game is all about mastery of the tracks and mechanics and the purity of that experience, just the same as were RR1 and RR Revolution. I love Rage Racer and RRType 4 too, but they moved away from the purity of the original games, and RR5 brought that back.
RR4 is the low point in the series for me, sure it has swell presentation, great theme song - but it deviates too much from pure Ridge Racing. It's soft. RRV brings it back with a bang, no bullcrap just sharp rave driving.
I love the ridge racer series, I used to play RR64 on the N64 till my thumbs would go numb on the joy stick... However by the time it got to PS2 generation... it was in a really competitive field. It wasn't just the jaggieness of the RR series, but sooooo many good racers were out. Even if RR on PS2 didn't have the jaggies, the poor game had to compete with the likes of Gran Turismo 3&4, Burnout 1-3, NFS (which had Hot Pursuit 2 and Most wanted, arguably the best NFS games ever released by EA). Then on top of it, it even had to compete with games such as Midnight Club, and NFS Undergrounds... which may not be a lot of true racers type of games, they definitely were pretty well made games. Looking back... we were really spoiled with racing games in the PS2 era. I'm glad to see some of the lesser big name titles getting some love.
