It seems almost fitting to see a Ridge Racer title among the vast number of launch games available for the PS2. Namco's original Ridge Racer was often used as a benchmark for demonstrating the Playstation's processing muscle. While this title may not have that sparkling new originality that made the first game so great there is still a lot to love about the fifth installment to the series.

In a time when almost every developer is attempting to create the next big driving simulation to dethrone the grand-daddy of all racers, Gran Tourismo, Namco has managed to stay faithful to its arcade heritage and develop a game that is both incredibly fast and accessible to everyone. Sure there are the naysayers who feel that RR's simple control scheme and powerslide cornering are gimmicky at best, but for the mass population who would rather drive at insane speeds and forgo the limitations of reality, Ridge Racer 5 is a dream come true. The dream does however come with a price and RR5 manages to hit a few speed bumps along the way.

Lets begin with the games abundant finer points, first off everything onscreen runs at a constant and surprisingly smooth framerate, at times the feeling of speed is so overwhelming you'll find your eyes clamoring to catch up with the scenery as it flies by. The cars, while not licensed, are designed to resemble real world vehicles. Some may find the lack of a license disappointing but once you see how well rendered each car is any qualms you may have had will go straight out the passenger window. Everything from a lighted dashboard display to the thin defrosting cables in the rear winshield are present, add to this some of the best environment mapping ever seen and you've got one of the best looking cars to grace a home system.

With great looking cars your going to need some interesting scenery to drive by and ogle at, fear not because Namco got the roads as well covered as the vehicles. Everywhere you look there are minor details like full polygonal traffic lights to some of the best looking trees I have ever seen in a game. Sun flares and dramatic lighting are the norm for this game not the exception. Where most in game roads suffer from that jagged and straight edged look, RR5's roads curve smoothly and realistically.

Control with the new improved Dualshock pad is both easy and pleasant, and with the tighter analog sticks pulling out of a tricky powerslide has never been easier. The key thing to remember here is that this is not a simulation, this is strictly an arcade racer. Namco designed the game to be fast and furious and on many levels they have succeeded. Where this game starts to falter a bit is in its graphic presentation, you see unlike its brethren Namco title Tekken Tag, the developers at Namco decided not to upgrade the graphics and include anti-aliasing so those dreaded jaggies you heard so much of on all those websites are present within the game. This is the first of only a couple of minor problems that keep this title from being triple A material. The second problem comes with the tracks themselves which while being beautifully rendered are just remakes of the tracks from the very original series. If you've seen one Ridge City track chances are you've seen them all. My final complaint comes as a direct result of the games difficulty level. The game starts off pretty tame but soon after you'll find yourself so frustrated with the computer controlled drivers that you'll be longing to hurl your new and expensive Sony console out the window.

Aside from these minor nuisances however Ridge Racer 5 truly shines and is a fine successor to Namco's king of racers. I would also like to get something off my chest, while many had complained about the games lack of anti-aliasing the issue was heavily overblown and as is this is still one of the finest looking games I have seen in some time.