Gripshift for the PSP – New Info and Screenshots

Source: IGN

GripShift is an interesting racing game that uses puzzle elements to spice things up. You race along a crazy winding track that floats high in the sky. Skidding out of control means you fall off the side and have to start again. There also obstacles and hazards to contend with that make life difficult. But once you get good with using nitrous (you can actually steer your car while you’re in the air), players can whip around the track with ease, or deliberately make crazy jumps off the track to reach key places for special items.

One of the hottest modes we saw was the track editor. You can basically make the craziest track your imagination can come up with, and give it to another friend to play on. The interface is simple to use. You just draw a track into existence, floating in mid-air just like the one in the actual game. Players can drop gigantic obstacles anywhere along the course, crushers, portals, traps, checkpoints, nitrous, even floating islands for the cars to jump over to. Even the time goals are customizable. Once you’re satisfied, you can test it out right then and there. The load times are rather quick and everything runs pretty smoothly.

SOE is going to setup a portal where players can upload there tracks online so that anyone can download and play them. They haven’t quite figured out if this will happen in-game via infrastructure mode, but if not, it will end up using PSP to PC connectivity via USB, and from there player will upload their track onto the web.

Multiplayer is Ad-hoc only, with up to 4 players. Players have to have the same tracks unlocked from single player mode in order to compete on them in multiplayer. Also, you can do more than race in multiplayer. Bonus games are available to you as well. There’s Penguin Bowling that requires you to ram your car into a cluster of penguin. It’s not as violent as some of you may think. The penguin actually end-up flying away when you hit them, instead of a bloody mess on the track. The cool part of the game is that various obstacles will impair your charge toward the penguin pins, like a speed bump in the track. So your approach requires a little strategy.

The soccer game it tight. You go head to head against someone, pushing a soccer ball with your car on a grassy field. The key is to use your nitrous to power into the ball and knock it forward. There’s a little mechanical goalie waving side to side, protecting the goal from the ball. Players must have good control of the car to beat their opponent because the inertia of the nitrous boost can send you flying past the ball, giving your opponent the obvious advantage. The game gets pretty wild and ridiculous, but most importantly, fun.

We also saw the new selectable characters in the game: Stacey, Bud, and Tommy Battle. They’re all supposed to be “urban” kids, to up the hip factor in the game. But the only contributions they make to the player’s experience in the game are their distinguishable voices that speak-up when their cars fall off the track.

Yes, they game is looking great, feeling great, and headed toward the shipping date. We expect to see it hit shelves some time this Fall.

Source: IGN

GripShift is an interesting racing game that uses puzzle elements to spice things up. You race along a crazy winding track that floats high in the sky. Skidding out of control means you fall off the side and have to start again. There also obstacles and hazards to contend with that make life difficult. But once you get good with using nitrous (you can actually steer your car while you’re in the air), players can whip around the track with ease, or deliberately make crazy jumps off the track to reach key places for special items.

One of the hottest modes we saw was the track editor. You can basically make the craziest track your imagination can come up with, and give it to another friend to play on. The interface is simple to use. You just draw a track into existence, floating in mid-air just like the one in the actual game. Players can drop gigantic obstacles anywhere along the course, crushers, portals, traps, checkpoints, nitrous, even floating islands for the cars to jump over to. Even the time goals are customizable. Once you’re satisfied, you can test it out right then and there. The load times are rather quick and everything runs pretty smoothly.

SOE is going to setup a portal where players can upload there tracks online so that anyone can download and play them. They haven’t quite figured out if this will happen in-game via infrastructure mode, but if not, it will end up using PSP to PC connectivity via USB, and from there player will upload their track onto the web.

Multiplayer is Ad-hoc only, with up to 4 players. Players have to have the same tracks unlocked from single player mode in order to compete on them in multiplayer. Also, you can do more than race in multiplayer. Bonus games are available to you as well. There’s Penguin Bowling that requires you to ram your car into a cluster of penguin. It’s not as violent as some of you may think. The penguin actually end-up flying away when you hit them, instead of a bloody mess on the track. The cool part of the game is that various obstacles will impair your charge toward the penguin pins, like a speed bump in the track. So your approach requires a little strategy.

The soccer game it tight. You go head to head against someone, pushing a soccer ball with your car on a grassy field. The key is to use your nitrous to power into the ball and knock it forward. There’s a little mechanical goalie waving side to side, protecting the goal from the ball. Players must have good control of the car to beat their opponent because the inertia of the nitrous boost can send you flying past the ball, giving your opponent the obvious advantage. The game gets pretty wild and ridiculous, but most importantly, fun.

We also saw the new selectable characters in the game: Stacey, Bud, and Tommy Battle. They’re all supposed to be “urban” kids, to up the hip factor in the game. But the only contributions they make to the player’s experience in the game are their distinguishable voices that speak-up when their cars fall off the track.

Yes, they game is looking great, feeling great, and headed toward the shipping date. We expect to see it hit shelves some time this Fall.