Now, although Namco should be praised for their willingness to attempt something new blah blah blah, you get the distinct feeling they'd have been better off just plopping a map down on the touchscreen, such is the unruly nature of the much-vaunted (by Namco, anyway) Touch Screen Steering. It works like this: on the touchscreen of the DS each time you start a race, there's a badly-drawn steering wheel. By scrawling over it with your stylus, it's possible to 'steer' said wheel, thus moving your car about on the top screen. Yes, it's as inept as it sounds. Quite simply, moving a stylus tip left and right of an invisible centre point just feels highly inaccurate. It doesn't work. At all. Infact, it makes us want to break things. The fact that you'll spend a good deal of time glancing back down at the bottom screen, thus taking your eyes away from the racing that's taking place on the top screen doesn't help, with these cursory glances proving - more often than not - fatal to your chances of winning.
People don’t drive cars with pens. There are reasons for this.
So within ten minutes (though being the professionals we are, we persevered for two hours), it's back to the trusty D-pad. And compared to moving a car with a stylus, it feels heavenly. Sadly, compared to an analogue stick, it feels rubbish. Admittedly the fact that Nintendo didn't plonk an analogue stick, or nub, or whatever you want to call it, onto the front of the DS, is hardly Namco's fault. But the D-pad can still work brilliantly in some racers. In games like the GBA's Super Mario Kart: Super Circuits, the D-pad offers an immediacy and a responsiveness that can't be beaten by an analogue stick. Driving with a D-pad is even enjoyable in the Grand Theft Auto games.
No, the problem here is that Namco have created a steering mechanic that simply isn't enjoyable. On almost any sharp corner of the game, your car is liable to start sliding manically. We appreciate that this slippery handling, or 'drifting' is the raison d'être for Ridge Racer games, but here it's overdone. So when you try and correct each 'drift', no matter how delicately you nudge the D-pad, you just end up over-correcting, and your car drifts some more in the opposite direction. Repeat until car hits wall and you can finally steady yourself.
So it's not a good start. And it doesn't necessarily get better. Certainly, the annoyance level is raised a few notches by the questionable collision detection - it's not unreasonable to expect cars not to pass through one another. But alas, within the first three races, this flaw rears it's primitive head. Spend just a few seconds grazing the rear bumper of an AI opponent, and - occasionally, though not always mind - said opponent will begin convulsing and twitching slightly as though possessed by some unearthly, supernatural force, before one half of your car passes almost clean through his. You've gained a place, but any joy to be reaped from this achievement is quickly tempered by the fact that the manouvre used to achieve this looked and felt so unconvincing. It's not only the car-to-car contact that looks distinctly shoddy either - clipping a mountain wall is all-too-easy, even if your car appears to be a foot or two away from the barrier.
The bumper view manages to make the racing slightly more dramatic.
The races themselves are mundane, largely predictable affairs. Note to Namco: it's hard to find a racing game rewarding when 90% of your victories come by overtaking the car in first place as you both hurtle down the last home straight. It's all rather too convenient for our liking, see. And we're only further maddened by the 'commentator', an enthusiastic but hugely patronising American gentleman who screams sayings such as 'ALRIIIGHT! THIS IS GONNA BE A GREAT RACE!' or 'OK, IT'S THE LAST STRETCH! KEEP GOING!' or 'YOU DID IT! YOU'RE THE CHAMPION!' at every possible opportunity. Infact, in keeping with the rest of the game, it's all rather disappointing audio-wise, especially considering the excellent efforts of Namco's sound department on Tekken 5. The brief selection of music tracks is off-putting and insipid enough, whilst hitting another car produces a sound more akin to a Coke can being stepped on than two heavy juggernauts colliding at considerable speed.
There's a multitude of other little gripes we could mention: the complete lack of a rear-view mirror or the ability to look behind you is plain baffling. The track design is middling at best, though largely poor. The AI-controlled opposition is mind-numbingly predictable. The game has it's more positive moments of course, mostly to be found in the decent wireless multiplayer mode (PALGN tried with four systems and can confirm that the game, like so many others, is far better with human opposition). But as it is, this feels like lazy game design, from the frankly terrible stylus/steering idea to the over-compensating steering to the bland ‘win-race-A-to-unlock-car-B’ method of progress.
Whilst the likes of Pac-Pix and Yoshi’s Touch & Go have demonstrated that the Nintendo DS' touchscreen technology genuinely opens new possibilities for games, Ridge Racer DS joins Rayman DS in that expanding group of games that wastes the touchscreen entirely. And in this age of Burnout 3 and true analogue control, and with the PSP's glossy Ridge Racers on the way, we're left with a game that feels more 1995 than 2005.
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