Back when the original Xbox launched, it had the desired killer app from day one in the form of Halo. Yet the Xbox 360, in spite of its useful specification and performance, still lacks the killer game that will alone shovel umpteen Xbox 360s back out of the shops that they're only just trickling into.

Ridge Racer 6 isn't it. And while it's far from a shelf-filler, it is the latest evolution in a franchise that's failed to react adequately to those around it. For back in the days of old, Ridge Racer was fast, pulsating, arcade-racing fun.

Even when Ridge Racer 5 was one of the titles launching the PS2, it maintained those qualities. Yet in the intervening period, the Need For Speed franchise has really risen, and Burnout with its sequels have appeared. Given the extremities that both of those games are renowned for, we now find that Ridge Racer 6 has taken the position of a sedate arcade racing title.

The idea is pretty much unchanged. You start off with a modest set of wheels and, through the main world explorer mode, look to boost your performance by winning races. In true Ridge Racer style, the races are won more often than not by how you take the corners. For this is a game that happily throws reality out of the window, in favour of some wildly entertaining drifting.

No need to slam the brakes on into a corner here; the game positively encourages you to lay off the accelerator a little, go into a drift, and then accelerate out as fast as you can. It can be genuinely exhilarating, even in the later races where the quality of your drifts is the main determinant in who crosses the finish line first.

The early stages of the game, though, suffer from not feeling very fast at all, and it does take some time before you're allowed to step behind the wheel of something with a little more oomph. Only when utilising the structured boost (known here as nitrous, which actively rewards those who leave their boost meter to fill right up via good drifting rather than using it all the time) will you feel genuine momentum in the earlier stages.

All of these stages are encompassed in the world explorer mode, which is structured in an unusual way. There are a couple of hundred races of different guises to tackle in the game, albeit across the same limited number of fictional tracks, yet there's no set way to tackle them.

The world explorer has a diagonal, grid-like look, and the idea is that you plot the races you want to take. You start towards the bottom of the grid, and if you pick races higher up, they inevitably get more difficult and more fun. It's actually a neat way to make your way through the game, and while it perhaps lacks the momentum that Burnout's similar world exploration mode has to offer, it does suit Ridge Racer quite well.

There's nothing, ultimately, fundamentally wrong with Ridge Racer 6, which emerges over time as a nice, classy arcade racing game. But with AI cars that refuse to grind against you, that rarely make any kind of error and that certainly don't flail into the scenery when taking a corner, there's an old-fashioned feel to it that contrasts heavily with the blatantly next generation console visuals.

That's not a bad thing per se, but bluntly, Ridge Racer 6 lacks the real innovation, energy and vitality to make it a must-buy. Instead, it registers as a nice, pleasant drive, albeit not one you'll be thirsting to take on a very regular basis.

High production values and steadfastly entertaining gameplay aside, Ridge Racer 6 is nonetheless the calmer side of a genre that has stronger entertainment to offer elsewhere.