Pure was of course one of the best launch titles for the PSP. Its colourful and sharp graphics, stunning sense of speed and online possibilities were a perfect showcase for the handheld and it’s therefore logical that the makers had a hard time making the successor a surprise. That this gets even more difficult by the fact that the series is already on the market for ten years needs no explanation.

One thing the game doesn’t lack is quality. As usual you get tight gameplay with excellent controls that react quickly and offer a deep learning curve. Also the challenge is constantly prolonged since the four difficulty degrees (and speeds with which you hover over the tracks) constantly force you to tackle curves and hard sections in different ways.

The stunning speed with which you have to control your ship luckily allows to enjoy the varied and well made tracks. Thanks to the “mag-strip” you can also make your vehicle stick to the road, something that makes even more spectacular stunts, nauseous curves and surprising sections possible. As said the visuals aren’t just a step forward compared to the previous version but also offer more variation in environments.

The progress in presentation also shows in the models and menus. These are typical Wipout and quite unique in the game world thanks to their original and minimal design. What you’ll notice is that unlocking new events now gets done through some sort of structure where you can choose which events you want to do first. If you score enough in total you get to go to the next cluster. This makes it easier to opt for the kind of race you enjoy most and even allows to completely ignore those you don’t like. With 235 parts to be finished in the Campaign mode you’ll no doubt be busy for quite some time.

Those that want more can have fun with the Racebox mode. There you can adapt your races and clusters completely to your liking and keep playing. Also “Zone” is back, a personal favourite, just like the chaotic Eleminiation and a new speed test where you have to get below a maximum track time within a certain number of laps.

Online everything is quite ok and eventhough we didn’t have the chance to finish a lot of test rounds, the game does promise the hardcore fan a lot of fun. You can share competition grids, make new designs for your vehicles on your pc and download them, get new content and race both locally as well as online.