Ridge Racer 7

Ridge Racer 7 was one of the titles that accompanied the launch of PlayStation 3, and true to the series' tradition it served as a showcase for what the new console could do. It offered smooth, high-resolution visuals, rich colors, and a sense of speed that looked dazzling on TVs of the time. The series never promised realism; its signature is the drift: lifting off the throttle before a corner throws the back of the car into a long, theatrically held slide that the player maintains with gentle corrections while simultaneously filling a meter for a sharp burst of acceleration on the straight.

The seventh entry expanded this basic mechanic with a fairly deep layer of tuning. The player collects parts for the engine, transmission, and chassis, combines them according to their driving style, and tunes the car for tracks with long sweeping curves or, conversely, for tight urban sections. The career is split into a long series of events with rising difficulty, complemented by online play, which in 2006 was among the first such offerings on console. An integral part of the experience is the music, meaning the series' signature mix of drum and bass, techno, and electronic pop that has accompanied it since the nineties and contributes significantly to its recognizable mood.

Reviews received the game positively, but it was often seen as a respectful, rather conservative update of the previous entries rather than a genuinely new step. That paradoxically works in its favor today, since it's a distilled form of what Ridge Racer was: a clean, fast, instantly understandable arcade racer without unnecessary fuss. The tracks are designed to be learned by heart and reward repeated runs where a player shaves off tenths of a second. As a reminder of a style of Japanese arcade racing that's practically no longer made, it's a title that deserves attention. This is helped by the visual style, with bold colors, neon tunnels, and cars inspired by real sports cars but deliberately fictional, so the game never feels like a brand catalog. For PlayStation 3 owners it's also a pleasant reminder of what the console's first weeks looked like.