UK PSN Goes Live For Vita Titles, WipEout Now Even Better

I’ve already gone on and on about how brilliant WipEout 2048 is, but my earlier impressions were purely based on the game’s single player portion, the online section (which requires a Network Pass, you’ll remember) was out of bounds.

Yesterday though, old buddy Joe (from ShopToNews) mentioned to me that the previously timing out sign-in process was letting him in – I gave it a quick go and, yes, he was right – WipEout’s online mode was now up and running; presumably to tie in with the Japanese release of the game.

So what’s new?  Well, apart from the actual multiplayer half of the game (it really is about half) there’s a few tweaks to the game’s home screen: namely an indicator to highlight how many of your friends are online (regardless of what they’re playing, or on what platform) and a news ticker icon.

It’s this news box that’s of most importance – it highlights any updates that your friends might have done in terms of beating your score, time or position on the various courses.  Think Autolog, but in near-future New York.  It’s really neat, clicking on an update takes you directly to that track to try to win back first place.

Leaderboards are now up and running (both Friends only and Global) for everything in the game, and now that I’ve spent a bit of time with the Speed Run section of single player (which opens up not long into the campaign) I’m happy to report that ghosts are in, along with the ability to download them and race against them.

At the time of writing I’m in first place for the first Speed Run.  Sure, there’s only two of us in there, but in second place is a certain WipEout pro you might have heard of…

I tried the Crossplay option (the one that connects to your PS3) and although it let me pick any of WipEout HD’s tracks (and ships) and jump into a lobby, the PS3 game wouldn’t recognise anything – presumably there’s going to be a patch for HD to make this all happen.

Finally, games like ModNation Racers also now have a fully functional online – you can share karts, mods and tracks and everything else the game offers.  I’m assuming the same for Everybody’s Golf, although the multiplayer stuff for that will require a patch update, which isn’t yet available.