Working in a video game store I often encounter the HDTV guy. He has some new 65″ liquid plasma television that he wants to brag about. His sound system was flown in from Germany and sounds like a Who concert. He has a million questions about refresh rates and hertz and all kinds of other words he makes up on the spot. He is so concerned with 1080p versus 1080i that he doesn’t even really care about the quality of the game he is buying. As long as it looks good on his mammoth television, gameplay doesn’t really matter.

The HDTV Guy is a new kind of Graphics Snob. Where the old graphics Snob wanted high polygon counts. The new HDTV Guy wants a blazing fast response time and great pixel resolution. He scoffs at your standard definition. If you are not playing in high definition then you might as well throw your television down a well, because it is worthless. If you are not close to a well, you should dig a well, so you have a well where you can then throw your t.v.

You see him in the wild, often in the Blu-Ray movies section checking out aspect ratios and what kind of Dolby Digital is supported. He can explain the difference between uncompressed and lossless audio formats. He will often ask if you have seen “this _____ movie on Blu-Ray?” Even when you tell him you didn’t care for it, he will respond with “but you have to see it in HD.” As if increased resolution can  make a terrible movie better. For all of his bluster he has yet to convince me that HD is all its cracked up to be.

I refuse to believe that clarity makes a movie or a game all that much better. For me the HD is like the Cherry on top of a sundae. Sure it is nice and delicious but I don’t hate the sundae without it. For the HDTV Guy the Cherry is all that’s important. For him all that matters is the pixel resolution.

Before HD, I don’t remember a single person that watched a movie and said “Wow that movie was cool, too bad we couldn’t see every blemish on the actors’ faces.” No one cared. Maybe we didn’t know what we were missing.

A wire has been crossed in the brains of a lot of people, and clarity has taken the place of beauty. Increased clarity does not make things appear more beautiful. If something is ugly, no amount of resolution is going to make it look good. In fact, increasing the resolution can often make things look worse. Some of the best looking games understand that the art direction is far more important. Would you rather look at a crystal clear dirty wall or a slightly less sharp sunset? I don’ t think many people drive to the beach to go stare at a wall for a half hour. Games have started to move away from the brown and gray color palette because a dirty wall is still just a wall, even in HD.

Anyone who thinks HD always looks better should try watching the evening news in HD. It is disturbing. You can see all the little stubble marks and pancake makeup. High definition make the news anchors look like early generation Terminators. There is no way you can honestly say that those extra pixels bring anything to the table other than terror, unless you like the idea of getting your news from Terminators. The HDTV Guy doesn’t care if the extra resolution makes once beautiful women appear old and crinkly. The HDTV Guy wants his news delivered at the maximum possible resolution.

The HDTV Guy doesn’t care if he is playing Summer Athletics THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE or Bioshock. HDTV Guy knows that the gameplay doesn’t matter. For the HDTV Guy everything is ‘ahhh-some’ in HD.

In the end, do not pity the HDTV Guy, unless you do it in full 1080p with Dolby Digital 7.1 Surround Sound.

"Is $20 really too much to ask for a solid, 1080p racing experience?"

It has basically become a running gag at this point that if anybody Jonah or myself come across mentions owning a PS3, we try to convince them to buy “Wipeout HD”. We feel we need to do everything in our power to get more people playing this game. Many people get scared off by a $20 price tag on a downloadable game, but is it really worth less because it’s not on a disc?

If you don’t already know, Wipeout HD is a futuristic racer available on the Playstation Network (PSN). I’ve always been an F-Zero man myself, as you can read about in another article. Even still, I’ve enjoyed Wipeout games from time to time, even if it was usually just a diversion for me in between F-Zero releases. After all, when the original Wipeout came out on Playstation, there was not yet a 3D F-Zero game.

After all these years, Wipeout never really clicked with me until Wipeout HD. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the series’ floaty style of turning, and I never understood why most futuristic racers felt the need to have weapons. My time with Wipeout HD has caused me to change from cursing the series for not being more like F-Zero, to celebrating its many differences that set it apart.

The tracks all have boost pads that behave exactly as you’d expect. There are also weapon pads. Driving over them will randomly give you an item from the game’s arsenal. Hitting your opponents with these weapons will not only slow them down, but also shave off some of their health bar. If a racer’s health is completely depleted, they are dead for the rest of the race. This can be a real blow in a tournament. Weapons have another function, though. If you are low on health, you can actually choose to absorb your weapon, instead of using it, to restore a portion of your health. Managing the choice of whether to use or absorb weapons makes for some interesting gameplay. Games like Mario Kart use weapons to the point where the actual racing becomes more of a joke. Luckily, I rarely get frustrated by the weapon use in this game.

The L2 and R2 buttons will allow you to air brake; a necessity for hairpin corners. An interesting (though a bit hard to use) feature is the side-shift. By pushing the L2 or R2 button twice in rapid succession, you can actually strafe your ship to the left or right a bit. This in combination with standard turning can lead to some complex maneuvers. Another cool feature is the “Barrel Roll”. No, not our podcast, it’s another maneuver! By hitting left, right, left (or vice versa) while in mid-air, you will do a barrel roll and gain a speed boost as soon as you hit the ground. Unfortunately, this will spend some of your health.  It’s a similar concept to F-Zero X and GX’s health-depleting boost mechanic, only with the requirement of being in mid-air.

My biggest complaint with Wipeout HD is that there are only 8 tracks (plus reverse versions of each). That doesn’t sound like a lot, but there are also 4 different speed classes that give each of these tracks a very different feel. Turning in Wipeout is an art. I would say this game has a moderately steep learning curve to really excel at it. The different speed classes make each one of these turns require a different kind of finesse to take. The reverse tracks don’t even feel the same at all. Unlike mirror versions, often found in games like Mario Kart, reverse versions are a drastically different experience, even requiring a few alterations to the track for it to even work.

The single player is divided into honeycomb-like groups of races of various kinds. Each one of these “honeycombs” contains Single Races, Tournament Races, Time Trials, Speed Laps, and Zone Mode races. Each of these is represented with a hexagon. Get at least a bronze and every hexagon around it will be unlocked to play. Get enough points overall and you’ll unlock the next “honeycomb”. This is one of the only racing games where I’ve found time trials to be addicting. Shaving a second off a record can be extremely satisfying.

Most of those modes are pretty self explanatory, so I will just mention the ones that might not be. Speed Lap is merely a challenge to a get as good of a time as possible on a single lap. Zone Mode is one of my favorites. Zone Mode starts out slow, but forces you to constantly be accelerating. The longer the race goes on, the faster you will get. You far exceed that of the highest class’s speed if your survive long enough. There are no weapons to absorb. You simply play until your health is depleted. Once it gets into the really high speeds it’s incredibly intense. You’re then graded on how far you got before you died.

The game has a very customizable online multiplayer. Queue’s of tracks can be setup for a tournament, you can adjust your speed class, and can even toggle off weapons if you so desire. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any support for voice chat at this time, but hopefully that will get patched in.

Custom soundtracks are supported. You can either use a folder or playlist. You also have the option for random or sequential selection and can even set it to pick up where it left off on a track in the next race. One of my favorite aspects about the custom soundtrack support is that you can toggle on real-time effects. For example, extra reverb is added when in a tunnel and a cut off filter comes on when you fly through the air. It really makes your music feel like it’s part of the game.

The graphics are simply beautiful. The game runs in 1080p and is a constant 60 frames per second. Even when playing online and local multiplayer, I have not had any frame rate issues. There are lots of little graphical touches that I find very impressive. One of my favorites is the time trial ghosts. There is actually a little hologram projector projecting the image of the car with the best time. It really adds to the immersion. I’m still holding out for a new F-Zero, but it’s literally impossible for it to look this good on the Wii as Wipeout HD does on the ps3.

Don’t let the twenty dollar price tag scare you away from this game. I’ve put more hours into it than some of the full, sixty dollar retail games I’ve bought. This is a very refined game and the more time I’ve put into it, the more I have enjoyed it. Buy it, love it, hop online and we’ll race all night.