We’ve been fans of the WipeOut series ever since, well, we bought a PlayStation, really. It has always had the right combination of thumping soundtracks, explosions and racing driver skill to make me squee. Frood likes it because he’s methodical and consistent so he quickly gets good. I like it because I process information really quickly and have fast reactions so I start off good and get better (although Frood usually catches up and overtakes because I’m more impetuous).

When we treated ourselves to a PS3 last year, of course we wanted to play WipeOut. Soon, promised the PlayStation Network. We will bring it to you soon and it shall be Glorious and it shall be Good and you shall fall to your knees and weep in gratitude for this Great Thing that we have provided for you.

‘Soon’ turned from months into seasons and Frood and I tried to slake our hunger by revisiting old games. It turned out that WipeOut Fusion, the most recent of the titles we own, is one of the very few games that will not play on the PS3. It’s buggy and eventually crashes. Luckily our PS2 is still part of our sexy black entertainment centre, so we just swapped a cable every time we wanted to play. We’ve been checking the PlayStation Store every so often hunting for the mythical WipeOut HD, our cynicism growing until it became habit rather than anything else. We’d go looking for Guitar Hero downloads and just quickly check, or see if there was anything new in the way of strange games like Echochrome (I shall review that diappointment later) and flick through the WipeOut HD teaser page while we were at it.

Friday nights Frood goes climbing. I fired up the PlayStation to give Echochrome a go (I lasted 5 minutes) and then went to the store, for the first time not even intending to check for WipeOut HD, so much faith had I lost. I was, get this, off to buy the downloadable version of N₂O because PS1 discs (we are loyal Playstation customers) won’t play very well in the PS3.

There it was. Right there. On the screen. OH. MY. GODS.

I DON’T CARE THAT I HAVEN’T BEEN PAID YET. GET THAT BITCH IN MY CART RIGHTTHISVERYMINUTE.

It’s a big game. It was still downloading when Frood got home. When I told him he was speechless. He didn’t believe me that it was really here.

But it is.

WipeOut HD is a totally different gaming experience from the other titles, at least at first. It is arranged differently. No more playing the League, which is a shame because I liked that. Now it’s a question of getting points over a range of different races and race modes in order to progress.

It’s fast. Dear gods it’s fast. The on-board computer has changed. Now it sounds like a female primary school teacher. The weapon system is also different. No more pit stops: now you can choose whether to deploy a weapon (although I have to say that weapon deployment appears fairly random as to whether it works or not) or absorb its energy. All the old favourites are there, except for black hole (shame). I don’t miss the flamethrower. The new proton cannon actually seems to have some meat to it.

The graphics are amazing. There is a real sense of acceleration from inside the cockpit when you hit one of the turbo pads. Yet they are also weirdly disappointing. They don’t have the jaw-dropping luscious near-reality of MotorStorm and the colours are very dark. If it turns out that all the tracks look like Katmoda 12 or Vohl Square I’m in trouble, because I’m slightly colour-blind in just the wrong part of the spectrum for those tracks to be clear.

As you can see, one of the new options is the photo mode — at any point in a race you can press pause and take a screenshot, including options for changing which ship you are viewing, from where in the ship you are viewing it, whether or not the HUD is in shot, plus contrast and exposure and other goodies.

Another new feature is the ability to create your own custom playlist. In the past we’ve nearly always resorted to turning the music volume down (even if the soundtrack is great at first, it gets a bit samey) and chucking some CDs in the stereo. Now you can make a playlist in the music section of your PS3 and import the playlist to the game. Wowzers. My only issue with that is that it’s impossible to skip to a preferred music track — maybe a feature for a future version. I’d like to think “Right, I need this race, so we’re going to have Hellsonic,” and choose that track.

It costs about twelve quid, which isn’t much when you consider how much Guitar Hero will set you back, although it’s quite a lot considering the usual price of downloadable games (Echochrome was £6.99). Worth it? Not sure yet. I think it depends on what the other tracks have to hold. I haven’t seen an equivalent of the glory that is Mandrashee, yet, and I’m not convinced by the colour scheme appearing to have come straight out of XG3 — never did get on with that.

Having said that, we were still up playing it 4 hours after it finished downloading, so maybe that tells you all you need to know.