WipEout HD: Fury

Zone Battle is the second new mode. At first it seems like a rejigged version of the Zone challenges with a full racing grid, but there's more to it than that. Similar to Eliminator, you're trying to reach a specific Zone Level rather than win a race. Everyone is accelerating all the time, automatically, and your maximum speed keeps increasing. The longer you keep going, the more Zone Levels you attain.

Obviously, when played with more than one racer, this means that everyone would level up at the same time, so there's another twist. Hitting boost pads charges up your Zone Meter, which can be traded in for a Zone Level boost. The more pads you hit, the more Zones you'll skip. Doing this also leaves behind a Zone Barrier, which will slow down whoever hits it. Luckily, you can also opt to trade your Zone Meter for a temporary shield, which makes you immune to Zone Barriers.

It sounds complicated, and to begin with it takes some getting used to. Once you grasp the fairly simple mechanism at the heart, however, it becomes a fiercely strategic way of playing. Jostling for position to hit the pads, risking damage in the process, and then working out the optimum time to hit that boost and ratchet your speed up in one eye-popping burst - there are lots of ways to approach the race, and there are depths here that will surely make this a multiplayer favourite.

Finally there's Detonator, perhaps the strangest addition to WipEout in the series' history. Played solo, it's essentially a rail shooter, a bit like Rez crossed with Audiosurf. As with the Zone modes, you're constantly accelerating and this time each lap represents a stage. You have a cannon which can fire a limited number of shots before it has to reload, and the track ahead of you is littered with mines and bombs. Consistent accuracy in clearing these out of the way rewards you with a score multiplier and bonuses, but any that you miss on each lap become more deadly next time around. Couple that with your escalating velocity and it soon becomes a terrifying suicide run.

You do have some defence, in the shape of an EMP burst which - like the Zone Meter - is filled by hitting pads on the track. The higher you fill the EMP meter, the further your burst will travel, clearing everything in its path but clocking up a fraction of the points you would have got for shooting them yourself.

It's a leaderboard game, basically, and a fiendishly addictive one at that. Using the glowing neon style of the Zone races, the Detonator experience takes on a nightmarish Tron feel, and those who manage to stay alive to stages 10 and above will have earned their bragging rights.