Lookwood Entertainment has posted this video to its YouTube account, showing off the features of its new Sodium 2 racing game for Playstation Home. As a result, they’ve kneecapped the embargo keeping me quiet about a few things in the game beta test. You may notice several things on this video, so allow me to provide some context:
You may notice that the vehicles are huge, hulking things in stark contrast to the compact bullets featured in games like Wipeout and F-Zero. I love them. They look experimental and grotesque. Very cyberpunk. They appear to fly as a result of brute physics, not glide on their own coolness. The vibe is very dragster/muscle car.
You may notice that the cars handle like grease-coated boulders. This is very much by design. You can earn in-game cash to upgrade the beasts (the same as the cash you earn from the Salt Shooter), but you will be competing against people who buy upgrades for real cash. You will pay, many times, for the privilage of staying competitive, and you will pay far more than you did in the Salt Shooter. With the Salt Shooter, you could pay $5 to access the full game and another $2 if you didn’t feel like grinding and wanted a pair of super weapons. These weapons could even be displayed in your Home apartment. Project Velocity, on the other hand, demanded $7 from me within the first half hour of play for marginal improvements to my vehicle. Lord knows where this gravy train ends.
Finally, you may notice that the video keeps showing the same two tracks and didn’t show multiplayer mode. There’s a reason for that. In all fairness to Lockwood, the company has not really been able to stay on their testing schedule, thanks to PSN’s month-long “episode,” but the game is hard to judge without more tracks and opponents. And Sony has made life even harder on Lockwood by making the excellent Wipeout XL/Fury absolutely free as part of its Welcome Back package.
