There’s just so little of it that it feels like this game needed another year to create more content to play through. Again, Namco hasn’t actually broken anything in this game what’s there works. This is where things really start to feel lazy. Ninja Gaiden Sigma+ at least, is honest about just being a port, and provides a whole lot more game for your money. There’s nothing broken here from a technical standpoint, just an appalling amount of recycling for what’s supposed to be a new game on a new platform. A total of three tracks are available, and they’ve been lifted from past games, as have quite a few of the music tracks. But while the game shows the technical chops of the Vita, it also borrows heavily from its predecessors and doesn’t show off a lot of variety. One look at the road and you’ll know this isn’t being displayed on a 3DS or a PSP. The game does a decent job of presenting graphics appropriate for the Vita.

Everyone else, particularly fans of the franchise or those looking for some value for their money, should know there are some pretty obvious concessions to either a lack of time or budget that have made this one of the emptiest Ridge Racer experiences to date. That basic skeleton is still intact, and if that’s all you’re looking for in a Vita game, then you may as well go out and buy this. This is still a game about unrealistic-yet satisfying-drift physics that sees fictional cars tearing around tracks, using more recent mechanics like charging up nitro to give a performance edge during competitions. Ridge Racer as a game still adheres religiously to its 90s arcade roots.

Ridge racer ps vita