Now that the State Farm ads are out of the way, it's time to get back to the serious business of loving Wipeout HD and the equally lovable Fury add-on, which is totally worth the ten bucks it costs.

After the jump are ten things I love about Wipeout HD and the Fury add-on.

10) The frame rate. Sony built Wipeout HD for speed.

9) The multiplayer, which works great online or splitscreen. As with MotorStorm, Sony deserves kudos for realizing that some of us like to play racing games when our friends come over to visit us.

8) The ships! All the lovely ships! The new Fury ships are better, faster, stronger (which is a little unfair when you go online and see some poor schlubs without the Fury versions of their ships). Some of them have transparent plates - or maybe they're force fields - bolted on. Here's the Harimau without plates.

And here she is with plates.

Lovely!

However, I'm an AG Systems man. Here's a tastefully weathered AG Systems ship from the basic game.

And here's the new AG Systems ship from the Fury add-on.

Lovelier! I haven't unlocked the AG Systems ship with the plates, but when I do, I'll do a little happy dance.

6) The elimination mode added in Fury. These races play like high-speed deathmatches. I was skeptical, and it still feels a bit random in that you're at the mercy of whatever weapon power-ups come up. But it plays out differently from other modes because you want to stay with the pack to wreak havoc. There's even a way to spin your ship around and use front-firing weapons against vehicles behind you. In other words, first place isn't a liability.

5) The new zone battles added in Fury. I was even more skeptical of these. But they're what TRON's light cycle battles would have been if we had Wipeout technology back then. They're fast, tense, wonderfully trippy, and wonderfully tactical. Do you zone ahead first to get a jump on everyone else and risk being passed by later, or do you save up your zoning power for a sudden win? Or do you use it to heal yourself and stay in the race longer?

4) This cat at the top of Sebenca Climb.

I love him. Who is he? What is he selling? I'll take a case of it.

3) The way the ships bob ever so slightly while they wait for the race to start.

2) Being able to pause and take pictures at any time (MotorStorm did it, too). Like this one:

1) There is no minimap. Racing in Wipeout relies on looking at the track and only the track. Although you can play on the forgiving novice difficulty mode and win many races on the first try, Wipeout is built for the maximum gratification that comes from syncing up a particular vehicle's abilities with how well you know a track from the insides, and not from some top-down map view.