Wipeout HD (2008)
Wipeout HD is a 2008 racing video game made by SCE Studio Liverpool and Sony Computer Entertainment.
WipEout HD arrived on PlayStation 3 as a downloadable title and immediately stood as one of the sharpest-looking games on the platform at launch. Anti-gravity craft race and fight through tracks from WipEout Pulse and Pure, rebuilt in high definition with a locked 60 frames per second that made every hairpin corner feel precise. The game is lean by design: no story, no padding, just the circuits, the craft, and the music.
Quick answers
What is Wipeout HD about?
WipEout HD arrived on PlayStation 3 as a downloadable title and immediately stood as one of the sharpest-looking games on the platform at launch. Anti-gravity craft race and fight through tracks from WipEout Pulse and Pure, rebuilt in high definition with a locked 60 frames per second that made every hairpin corner feel precise. The game is lean by design: no story, no padding, just the circuits, the craft, and the music.
When was Wipeout HD released?
Wipeout HD was released on 25 September 2008.
Who made Wipeout HD?
Wipeout HD was made by SCE Studio Liverpool and Sony Computer Entertainment.
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Wipeout HD in our writing
- Companion guide: Psygnosis: Wipeout, Lemmings and the Coolest Studio in Games
A few thoughts on Wipeout HD
The same stripped-back focus on pure mechanical feel runs through Burnout Paradise, where the city replaces the futuristic circuit but the commitment to speed as spectacle holds. Both reward players who learn to read the track rather than the minimap.
Electronic music built to race against
Wipeout HD strips everything down to circuits, anti-gravity craft, and a soundtrack that carries most of the mood, continuing a series tradition of leaning on real electronic acts like The Prodigy's The Fat of the Land. Vangelis's synth-built Blade Runner, Tangerine Dream's cosmic Irrlicht, Muse's Simulation Theory and Black Holes and Revelations, and the chiptune rush of Floppy Disk Overdrive all chase that same forward-leaning momentum.
Science fiction where a cold, striking future does the talking
Wipeout HD never explains its world; the chrome tracks and stripped-down interface say everything about its future on their own. Ghost in the Shell builds a whole future city out of that same quiet, technological unease, Galaxy Express 999 turns space travel into a strange, melancholy frontier, and Half-Life 2, Portal and Portal 2 all wrap sparse, cutting dialogue in the same cold, precise environments.