The premise behind the WipeOut games is solid: take a handful of futuristic vehicles, throw them at ridiculously insane tracks, toss in a few weapons and let the entertainment ensue. It features blazing speed, hairpin turns, last-minute defeats and plenty of fiery infernos. On paper, it all looks great. In practice, it occasionally works. Like most games, though, WipeOut Pulse is defined not by its exhilarating exceptions, but by the moments in between.

You won’t have to play long to realize that WipeOut Pulse takes great pleasure in robbing you of any sense of control. Your vehicles respond too quickly in some cases and in others seem to ignore input almost entirely. A lot of the time it feels like you’re floating, not steering. The resulting frustration is compounded by track design that worsens matters. Frequent switchbacks and narrow lanes all but guarantee failure the first time you attempt any new sector. Even lowering the difficulty level only has a marginal impact.

The game quickly settles into an uncomfortable routine. On lap one, you’ll probably lose some ground before coming up on the second lap in reasonable shape. From there, your armor will deplete fairly rapidly as you weave around mines your rivals have dropped, get rammed from behind after missing a booster or bump into a corner because you tried to take it too sharply. As you enter a given race’s final stretch, you’ll find yourself on the brink of disaster but determined to persevere. Then, a few turns short of the end, you’ll graze a wall or an adversary will bump against you and you’ll watch all of that progress go up in smoke as your vehicle is reduced to scrap metal.

Most of your early time spent with WipeOut Pulse is really just training. You’ll learn to use the ’L’ and ’R’ buttons when cornering, since they allow for tighter turns. You’ll steer a lot less and just let the vessel glide through turns you eventually memorize. You’ll learn what weapon does what and when to deploy missiles or auto-pilot for maximum effectiveness. That knowledge can eventually change the way the game plays and will allow you to finally hit your stride.

Only then can you enjoy the things the game does right. It’s when you begin to appreciate that the tracks are so much more than just stale walls, that the techno soundtrack really is pretty cool and that the load times are remarkably brief for a game with such high production values. Your familiarity may even breed interest in the ability to outline custom circuits, or in the stats scrolling along the bottom of menu screens that track interesting details like what weapons you’ve used or how many times you’ve activated shields. You might even enjoy racing online once you’re sure that you can handle things well enough to avoid total humiliation at the hands of a stranger.

The big question is whether or not you’ll have the patience to work through the initial frustration. Why would you choose to spend hours with a game you don’t like, after all, just so that you can someday begin to enjoy it? That sort of dedication shouldn’t be necessary, yet in this case, it is. The sleek graphics, the thumping soundtrack, the overwhelming sense of speed, the customization options... those things are all nice, but only if you’re enjoying the core experience. For some people and maybe even for you, WipeOut Pulse is worth the effort involved and then some. For the rest of us, it’s just a little too much like work.