Fatal Inertia EX - 8/10

Fatal Inertia EX surprised me one day when I went on to the PSN. I had not seen or heard anything about it but was looking for something to tide me over until the release of Wipeout HD. I will admit my expectations were not overly high but this has become one of my most played games lately. Easy to pick up and good for a quick blast every now and again. But lets look at it in a wee bit more detail.

BASIC GAMEPLAY

Okay so the basic game play is similar to Wipeout. Racing around a circuit style track using anti-grav race craft and picking up weapons or other items by going over a little pad. There are numerous ways of playing the game. Single player has quick race or career mode. Career mode is competing in numerous leagues, of increasing difficulty, to unlock items in the garage. Multiplayer is the basic online player versus player or splitscreen on the one PS3 with 1-4 players supported. But to make it a little bit more interesting there are numerous ways to actually race set before the race begins. Ranging from flat out speed to my favourite magnet mayhem where you build up an amount of magnets every couple of seconds to disperse on the other racers as you see fit but more on magnets a little bit later.

RACE CRAFT

As per Wipeout there are different “teams” that you can choose. In Fatal Inertia there are four main craft types or companies. These are:
• Mercury Class – The first available craft that you can modify. Basically put the beginner craft. Fast and good handling but in the right hands a very capable little craft,
• Phoenix Class - The second available craft that you get after completing the first league if I remember correctly. This is the jack of all trades, a good all rounder craft that can be made to suit your style quite easily,
• Aurora Class – The third available craft that is the speed demon of the four. Sacrificing armour for speed means this craft is best left for the experienced racer as too many crashes and it good night,
• Titan Class – The last available craft that reminds me of a truck. Big and heavy enough to push the other craft around and cause some serious damage with its weapons but slow to get to speed and clumsy on the corners.

WEAPONS

Fatal Inertia has a wide variety of weapons which you use to gain combat points. If you have the most combat points at the end of the competition then you get the added bonus of being the ‘combat champion’. The weapons are quite well described in the tutorial in their uses so I will just give a quick overview;
• Magnets – The basic weapon. Basically is an explosive magnet that sticks to the craft and after a while explodes causing a little bit of damage. They also slow your craft down slightly while stuck to your craft.
• Cluster Magnets – A bunch of magnets clustered together. More magnets = more damage and less speed.
• Rocket – Ol’ faithful. Primary fires rocket forward to hit target or my favourite secondary use rocket stays attached to craft and you ride it along for a speed boost.
• Force Blast – Primary fires a blast forward to disrupt other craft within blast area and secondary gives you a boost much stronger then the rocket boost but for less time.
• Smoke Bomb – One of the best uses of smoke I have seen for a while. Primary fires it forward to create a large cloud of smoke to obscure the track (Why you would want to blind yourself I don’t know) or secondary launches behind you for a much more logical use of the smoke bomb.
• Cable – Launches a cable to pull you along quicker, attach to another racer or the best use to attach another racer to the ground or another racer to stuff them up.
• Force field – Does exactly the same as usual, make you invulnerable for a short amount of time.
• EMP – Nothing quite like being on the final stretch in second place and launching one of these bad boys to see ol’ mate first place crash into the ground as all his electronics get disrupted.
• Time Dilator – An interesting and rare weapon similar to that of the shrinking mushroom of Mario Kart. Instead of shrinking the other craft though it slows down time for everybody else but you so while they are cruising along you hoon on by at accelerated speed.

TRACKS

There are six environments or locations being Proving Grounds, Lost Canyon, Deepwoods Pass, Paradise Isle, Devil’s Summit, Glacier Bay and Dragon Peaks. Combining all these six environments gives a total of 51 tracks which can keep you busy for some time. These tracks range from short to quite long and have some really good visuals if you can spare some time to look. Lost Canyon is a good example with actual dust storms sweeping across while you race. Water is abundant in Paradise Isle with some excellent water effects and the snow and ice in Glacier Bay just makes you feel a shiver while you race.

THE GARAGE

This is one of my favourite things about the game. The ability to modify all four of the racecraft to make your craft individual and personal to yourself. There are so many options available to you that no craft should be the same. Multiple paint schemes and emblems give you the basic feel then there are the style of ****pit, spoiler, hull, front end of the racecraft. Wings and engine types change the way your race craft will fly so you can get it feeling just right. This adds a little bit more life to the game and make you want to continue to play the game to unlock all the features to make your craft exactly the way you want.

Overall I quite liked this game. Yes in basic principles it is Wipeout but with a couple of added touches. If you want something to fill the gap until Wipeout is released or are just looking for a decent racer that you can pick up quickly and have a bit of fun then this is the game for you. At $29.95 it isn’t too pricy and if you ain’t 100% on it then you can always try the demo. Both are available for download at the PSN store. Go on give it a try and you may even come to enjoy it as much as I do.

Submitted by jimhill41 21/08/2008 126 20

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Fatal Intertia EX

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