Tired of gray and brown current-gen titles? WipEout HD more than compensates by assaulting your eyeballs with as many different colors as humanly possible (no wonder it failed the epilepsy test). One level in particular starts off completely white, with a tidal wave pulsing through every so often. Every time it passes by, the colors of the environment change, each one bold and saturated, as is the norm for the series. Potentially distracting, this made playing through the level a joy as it constantly fluxed and changed around us.

"Obviously, we crashed on purpose just to check out what it looked like. Obviously."

All this is compounded by the silky smooth framerate, which never wavered no matter how hard we tried to trip it up. Even the crashing animation looks stunning, with your craft splitting into glowing chunks and exploding in a burst of light. Obviously, we crashed on purpose just to check out what it looked like. Obviously.

As for gameplay, there's not much that's new here. As the name suggests, it's any WipEout game you've ever played, but in HD. Controls are still rock solid (we didn't try SIXAXIS controls, but the option is there if you're feeling masochistic). Powerups are the same and even most of the tracks can be found in previous iterations of the game.

One aspect of the game that has been added in since we last saw it is a split-screen competitive mode. A huge boon for the latest entry in a franchise that has been a popular party game over previous console generations. The implementation is well thought out too, with the ability to select either horizontal or vertical split screen. Really, horizontal's the only real choice, but it's nice to have the option.

It's kind of scary seeing games such as this, alongside PixelJunk Eden and Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty, being made available for download. This game easily has the graphics and gameplay of a full Blu-ray title. WipEout HD is a game we were looking forward to grabbing from the PSN Store over a year ago. While our desire for the title dwindled as it faded out of the public eye, seeing it again in full force has us hyped all over again. Now if only we had a solid release date ...