Some gamers may remember that Fatal Inertia was originally planned as a PS3 release, due to the team having access to dev kits early, but the plan obviously hit a few snags along the way. Fatal Inertia ended up seeing a release on the 360 first, and the eventual PS3 version, the one we have now, is strictly a PSN title with no disc-based release.

All together the port seems to be solid and free of graphical glitches, but I have noticed some sound issues when playing thru the tracks, usually with the sound completely cutting out for a second or two at a time. It's definitely something that needs to be addressed and patched, since the complete absence of sound at random times is incredibly distracting from the gameplay.

The game definitely resembles a kart racer when you get down to the actual racing side of things, with the track layouts being made up of various paths with weapon power-ups scattered about. Simply run your futuristic racer over one of these pods to obtain the power-up, many of which have secondary uses. There are a decent variety of weapons and tools at use here, and they're not simply clones of other similar titles. For instance, there's a cord that you can opt to shoot out at other vehicles or objects on the racetrack, with the idea use being something that can whip you around corners or help you instantly catch up with an opponent. Magnets end up being a primary weapon (and even feature heavily in one of the race types available), but you can also obtain a shield, rocket boosts, an EMP style blast, and a few other power-ups.

Fatal Inertia places a heavy emphasis on using weapons, even having a secondary counter on screen that keeps track of combat points, determined by how much damage you cause to other players. You can even completely destroy opposing vehicles, which is somewhat difficult to do, but will award you 100 points at once for doing so. Obviously you can also be destroyed yourself, and the game provides barrel rolls as your primary defense, using these to shake off most attacks directed at you.

The track environments of Fatal Inertia end up being the highlight of the game, with some incredibly lush visuals at play. While the track designs themselves are pretty varied, they never really amount to much more than simply tracking down the next checkpoint (visibly marked by a laser) and moving on to the next. Granted, you might have multiple paths to take to get to the next checkpoint, but you all end up in the same place in pretty much the same amount of time, I never really felt like I was coming across any type of advantageous short cut.

Also, the racing element isn't particularly challenging. It's easy to shoot ahead of your opponents within the first lap, and stay ahead for the majority of the race. With so many different power-ups at your disposal, even if you lose the lead you can easily gain it back. Enemies don't seem to attack you nearly as much as you can attack them, and while you'll always have 2 or 3 racers right behind you they rarely seem to be able to overtake you on the track. As you progress thru the various circuits the turns become tighter and the tracks a bit more complex, but you can simply curve your racer to the left or right using one of the shoulder buttons, and you shouldn't have much trouble navigating the turns or avoiding other obstacles. You can probably blame a lot of this on the fact that there was some complaining during the original release on how hard the game was, and it seems like the developers really tried to make the game more accessible, but now that the challenge has been stripped away it ends up feeling more bland.

Besides the basic racing elements, the game does have a surprising amount of customization available when it comes to your racers. You can opt to customize not only the exterior features of your ship, but also the engine and brakes to help increase the overall performance of your racer. This is something you'll definitely want to play with, since the default ships you'll gain from the single player career are boring to look at.

There's also a decent amount of features with the multiplayer modes, and Fatal Inertia supports split-screen play as well, even in the career mode. The online mode supports up to 8 players, but I had difficulty finding a full match to get into. Obviously your online opponents provide a much greater challenge then the typical AI, but if you can't find a full game to get into, the track feels empty.

Fatal Inertia EX is a solid enough racer, but it doesn't merit as much attention when compared to other racing titles on the PS3. And being a PSN title, the price point might be a bit steep for players to take a chance on, which also severely diminishes the quality of the multiplayer modes. The game itself is beautiful to look at on a high def display, but the actual gameplay comes off as stale and not that exciting to get into. If the difficulty was a bit more balanced, and the opposing racers felt like more of a threat, then I would have had a much better time playing Fatal Inertia EX.