Namco has just made a major update of its r: racing evolution website, right before this week's TGS. 2 new movies have been added (along with some nice wall papers). We made a local copy of one of the 2 movies here (get the other on namco's website or at watch impress).

The game introduces a new system called "pressure battle": when you get close to an opponent, a "pressure meter" appears, showing the driver's "pressure". The pressure increases when the time lag between you an the opponent becomes smaller, or when you move your own car right and left (as the driver in front of view sees you in the back mirror). When the pressure is too strong, the probability of doing an error increases...on the other side if you make an error, the opponent's pressure comes back to a normal level. Psychologically strong players have a longer pressure jauge.

The page shows how the player puts the pressure on driver "silvestre" on force him to commit a mistake (apparently a French driver that drives in Japan, but owns a wine domain in the south of France and enjoys cuisine, music and nice women - don't ask me why ). It sounds like an interesting system indeed, they seem to have put a lot of effort in AI this time...

The movies show a polished game, although quite standard. All race games have very similar visuals nowadays anyway.

Unlike Nintendo with Fzero (which, according to my personal opinion, has been made overly difficult and targets the fanatical hardcore audience - which of course includes me anyway), it looks like Namco is trying to broaden the ridge racer audience by doing something closer to GT4. Will the "emotional" factor (and hopefully the unique ridge racer gameplay) be enough to make the difference? We will find out very soon.