Wii60 Impressions: Fatal Inertia
Finally today I got to play Fatal Inertia. As Kenny K reported, it went up in the Japan and US territories this morning as a tiny 320mb download. Originally an exclusive for the PS3, the game was recently announced for the 360 as well due to ‘development problems’ with the PS3. The game has been talked about for a while, and I think its pretty much been the consensus of the entire community that it looks a lot like a Wipeout rip-off. So does this futuristic racer stand out on its own? Or will it fade into the background like a future that will never exist? Read on as I dish out some impressions.
Starting up the demo, we’re given 3 different race options, I fire up the first one and while the level loads I’m bombarded by the controls which honestly look incredibly confusing at first. To accelerate you use the A button, and in order to brake you press X. If you hold A&X together, as you come out of the brake you get a quick boost of speed. In order to strafe you use the triggers (takes a bit of getting used to as I kept mistaking it for accelerate and brake. You’re also able to fire weapons using LB, RB - more on that later.
Graphically the game is powered by UE3 so it does look damn good, the vehicles don’t have too much detail on them however - unsure if this is by the futuristic design or lazy developing. As I got going I noticed straight away a lot of frame stutter; I figure this is due to the fact that it’s a demo and isn’t representative of the final frame rate.
After a few initial crashes, figuring out the controls as I went along, I was soon into the swing of things and zipping around the track in my anti-grav racer. Unfortunately the tracks in the demo all appear to be the same one, so I found myself going around in circles for the races. Its possibly that some of the tracks were different - but if so then I certainly couldn’t be sure; which is quite telling of the level design quality.
Racing over purple rings on the ground allow you to pick up weapons. I soon fired off a few shots and watched my weapons find their way towards the enemy racers. I honestly wasn’t too impressed by what appeared to be an impact (at times I wasn’t even sure of whether I’d hit them).
Using the strafing buttons it becomes easier to turn some of the corners -but I expected them to be a bit more responsive than they were, I almost didn’t notice I was strafing it at first.
The sound effects on the game didn’t really leave me too impressed. The engine didn’t sound particularly beefy and the generic techno sound track actually began to send me to sleep at some point.
From the press releases that I have read in the past, the game is apparently quite proud of its physics system - something which I didn’t exactly see shine through in this demo. Sure when I got hit by enemy fire, my ship rocked from side to side but that was probably about all I noticed. Unless you want to count crashing into a rock and coming to a dead stop.
As a summary of my play of the demo, I’d say the game might be worth it if it was a budget title - however it really doesn’t feel better than that quality. Who knows? They may nail it by the September 11 release date, but I’m honestly not sure. I guess if there’s one way I could describe it, it would be using a term I’ve found appropriate for a lot of next-gen games recently. The game doesn’t seem to have any ‘soul’ or ‘feeling’ behind it. Its almost like it was made for the sake of being made and nothing else.
Finally I apologise about these impressions being short; there simply isn’t too much that’s worth saying about this game. Stick to Wipeout and F-Zero guys. Well established futuristic racers that have something nice and unique about them. Fatal Inertia just isn’t worth it.
Discuss over at the forums.
-Andy
