RED BULL ISLAND HANDS ON Posted by Joe Anderson on Jan 8, 2009 13:36 (Jan 8, 2009 13:36) |
Playstation 3 owners have been waiting since before Xmas for the Red Bull space to appear in Playstation Home, well now it’s here and having just made a brief visit to check it out our impressions now follow.
From the moment you visit Red Bull island you are met with the luxurious surrounding of palm trees and sparkling blue water, underneath your feet is some decking to stop your feet getting wet. From the off there are a few attractions to the island such as the fact that you can socialise in these beautiful surroundings, well that and the fact that you can partake in some Red Bull air racing, well once you figure out how that is.
To take part in the Red Bull Air race you must make your way to the three aircraft which are sitting on the decking at the far end of the island, these should immediately stick out since this is where most of the people will be gathered. As soon as I got there I was met with the usual “how do I play” greetings that you would expect, and I have to say it took me a while to figure this out myself, before finally realising that you should stand back from the crowd a bit, face the aircraft and then target using X, if you don’t get the Red Bull Air Race option up and instead target another player then you can simply retarget until you find the correct option using your D-Pad.
 Anyway, while everyone else was still arguing over how to play I managed to get in, I tried this at least 5 times, so unless the game was not busy, which seems doubtful then unlike the bowling in Home, it seems that there may not be a queue system in place (though don’t quote me on that).
The game itself is a lot of fun, at the beginning you are given the choice of three aircrafts and then once in everything is simple to control, the right stick is used for acceleration, left stick controls how you fly (pushing up takes you down, down up etc) and the L1 and R1 buttons are used to flip on to your side.
The aim of the game is simple, basically all you need to do is fly through the green hoops on the screen, the only twist here is that sometimes you will be required to fly through the hoops in a certain position such as on your left/right side, failing to meet the requirement will see you punished with a 3 second penalty, whereas crashing will see you disqualified. Although you are timed throughout the entire race there doesn’t seem to be any sort of leaderboards which is a shame, however perhaps this will come in time.
Given my short time on the island I don’t really want to judge it too much, it does seem good fun, even with the “how do I play” teething problems, however I just hope Sony tweak it slightly to add some sort of leaderboard and at least make it a little more competitive, otherwise people are going to get bored quick.
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