Joystiq hands-on: Ridge Racer 7 (PS3)

Namco Bandai's Ridge Racer 7 is gorgeous. After 36 minutes of waiting in line and 13 seconds of loading screens, we got a chance to play a track of one of the few PS3 games running in 1080p. The attention to detail is impressive, including:

• Taillights blur and stretch while in tunnels
• Effective shadowing and reflections against your car
• When nitro is activated, giant flames blast out from the back of your car and the environments blur accordingly.

One thing we noticed was that you could not damage your car -- not by running into other cars, skidding against the side rails, or ramming straight into a wall. And while all tires left tracks, they would disappear by the next lap.

Everything else is what you'd expect from a racing game. Is it incredibly realistic? Not really, but the game was still pretty fun, and one of the few titles that pushed the PS3s graphics capabilities.

Favorite moment: Everyone in line, myself include, finished the race by drifting our cars to the point where we crossed the finish line backwards.

Here's a video of the demo: