F Zero GX Vs WipEout HD Fury - Casino Palace/The Amphesium
44A showdown between my two favourite futuristic racing series - it's F Zero GX versus Wipeout HD Fury. Wipeout is being played on the PS3. Although I still own a GameCube and a copy of F-Zero GX for it, I'm using a version of Dolphin emulator to play it here, because it allows me to upscale the game into HD and get far crisper and nicer looking footage than if I were to use my SD capture device, which adds an extra layer of graininess to everything it records. The downside to this though is that the game does get occasional moments of slowdown where the framerate can drop a little (on the whole it's not super noticeable though) using Dolphin. The GameCube is a system that's a whole generation before the PS3, so upscaling the game in to HD helps to even the playing field a bit.
Although both games are futuristic racers, they do differ a bit in the gameplay department. Wipeout tends to have more of a focus on narrower courses with fewer ships that you tend to encounter in smaller groups. F-Zero GX tends to have big open courses with a lot more ships (30 in total) that seem to bunch together a lot, so you can easily go from 1st to 30th in the space of seconds if you're not careful. Wipeout also has weapons that are obtained throughout the race for one off use by driving over certain pads, whereas F-Zero GX has attacks involving the ships actually ramming and spinning into each other (not that I ever tend to really use them).
Both games look and sound absolutely amazing, both running at 60 fps, and I think both really pushed their respective systems to the limits. Obviously, being a generation later. the PS3 has the upper hand graphically, However, played on Dolphin, upscaled into HD, I think F-Zero could easily pass as a current gen game. I can remember seeing Wipeout HD for the first time on a mate's PS3 and just being absolutely gobsmacked at how good it looked. Suffice to say it was not long after that I also got a PS3 and a copy of the game. Likewise, before F-Zero GX came out, I had a promo disc that came with a UK GameCube mag that showed footage of it running and after seeing it in action, I just couldn't wait to get my hands on the game. I actually uploaded the footage from that promo disk aaaages ago. You can view it here if you're interested (it's interesting because some of the track layout is actually a bit diffrent to the finished product):
https://youtu.be/nZj8NigjzM8
F-Zero's default default speed is fast. Like, eyeball meltingly fast. Wipeout HD starts off at a more reasonable pace and the faster speed classes unlock the more you play it. I'm using Rapier class here, the second fastest, which is pretty nippy. If I'd set the game to Phantom, the fastest speed, I would have spent the whole game crashing, I'm that out of practice. F-Zero GX is definitely the harder of the two. The game is notorious difficult in places. There's a very funny rant about it here:
https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=711267
That's not to say that Wipeout HD isn't challenging though, it can be pretty tough in places too.
Which is the better game? I'm going to have to give a cop out answer here and say in my opinion they are both equally awesome. Trying to pick a favourite out of these two series would be like trying to pick a favourite sibling.
Anyway, let me know what you think! Are you in camp F-Zero or are you a Hardcore Wipeout fan?
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