biker – previous weapon

A SECOND WIND REVIEW

FBT returns to Road Rash with the ‘spiritual successor’ Road Redemption. They don’t make them like they used to.

Road Redemption sprung from a Kickstarter project to remake Road Rash. Over the next few years, via Steam’s Greenlight and early-access, Pixel Dash Studios and EQ-Games attempted to fashion not just a game, but a return to those times. But this isn’t quite how I remember it.

Road Rash was awesome; a titan in the classic era of mayhem on the roads – alongside Carmageddon, Driver, the Madness series and the original GTA, RR was morally wrong and beyond fun, one of those early nineties games that got the Daily Mail in a tizz and we all loved because it got the Daily Mail in a tizz. You know a game is good when the first thing you recall about it was running over grannies. The ‘clunk’ when you hit someone with a bat – the bat you’d just taken off them, then kicked them into a passing car. Taking out the cops and running over de-biked opponents. Getting thrown off your bike and skidding for miles before getting run over yourself. Making your way up the ranks, from Rat Bike to Super Bike. Road Redemption attempts to recapture those days. Ballsy.

This time around, instead of an illegal street race, there’s something of a purpose. Like we need one. But it’s a great, sly nod to those text explanations at the start of Doom, giving you vague justifications and context then letting you lose. Or maybe it’s just daft; a mysterious biker has offed the leader of a local bike gang, who then post a huge bounty on his head. As he races through various biker gangs’ patches, they mount up, hoping to catch the bounty. Naturally, it degenerates into everyone kicking holy hell out of each other to get the bounty first.

Set-up aside, it’s familiar ground. Arcade in style, we get a basic bike and start at the back then race to reach the flag, placing in the top three to gain money and XP which we use to upgrade and stand a better chance of surviving the next leg. As each sequence progresses, we get more weapons, and occasionally different tasks like taking out the leader of a rival gang. Dying means you lose it all and have to start at the beginning of the chase, which is one throwback too far.

Road Redemption isn’t a slick game with retro roots, it’s dated; referencing the past is one thing, releasing a contemporary game that plays like it is risky – the bike handles like shit. You never get a sense of weight, grip or tolerance from it, never gauge how it’ll corner, how it’ll react or how far to push it; it practically just slides from left to right. If you come to a dead-stop after hitting something, you have to reverse to get free and it has the turning circle of a super-tanker not a superbike; or you can pause, go into the main menu and pick ‘put me back on the road’ – both are a faff that take you from 1st to 12th in no time. Breaking is too slow to have any chance of avoiding collisions, which are a crapshoot when it comes to outcomes; the game physics are insanely unpredictable. Hitting something either stops you, bounces you across (if not off) the map or separates you from the bike and kills you. And there’s a lot to pile into; dead ends, drops, hills, cliffs, houses, cars, plus falling off buildings, bridges, the edge of ramps and random things like rocks and other obstacles are everywhere – you can’t put this many accidents-waiting-to-happen in a game where left and right are more of a metaphorical choice. You unlock better bikes as you go, but ‘better’ is largely subjective. They look better. Back in the day, the wonky physics led to such unintentional hilarity it was worth losing pole position, but this game puts so much stock in winning, it’s a frustration when it costs you huge bonuses and forces you to restart.

The controls are messy too. Our biker can be armed with up to four different weapons, ranging from OTT blunt weapons and swords as well as explosives and machine guns, but you have to specify which side to attack on; yet the kick button auto-targets whoever’s nearest so why can’t he auto-swing too and save a button? It would work if he could hilariously dual-wield but it’s just one key too many; you need to use a blunt weapon to knock off armour before switching to something stabby – if you just clout them, they take a lot longer to go down, and our rider can’t sustain the blows he’s taking from all sides – especially when you also have to block as well; you’re swinging left, right, kicking, blocking, switching and trying to keep the grip-less bike on the road while swamped by riders who constantly land perfect hits and control their bikes like pros. Plus, reverse and break are different keys too? It tries to be tactical but loses the recklessness of the original by over-complicating the experience. Games like those should be stripped back, leaving you to just react and get caught up in the mayhem. As you progress the layouts change from desert wilderness to inner-city and there’s secrets and shortcuts, but the environment looks like something from a decade ago; it’s not unpleasant, just bare.

The biggest let down though is the lack of vehicular homicide. There’s no pedestrians. That was the best part and not including it is the final nail; the original was a giggle-some mad dash to the next city, a biker’s Cannonball Run but there was also the bar everyone met in, the silly photoshopped faces; the daftness of Road Rage is missing – and so is its spirit. I’d forgive Road Redemption’s flaws if it was half as naughty, half as nuts as the original.

At least … that’s what most of the other reviews of Road Redemption have been saying. And at first I was much the same.

Thing is, there is a move toward rediscovering old games, celebrating their simplicity and commitment to just providing a good time. For every smug, bloated CoD there’s some once-forgotten game doing gangbusters on GOG.com, a rediscovery courtesy of Night Dive Studios, a nod to the era like Miami Takedown or a reboot by the original devs like Carmageddon Regeneration. You can’t moan about Redemption not being finessed, it came from Kickstarter. There’s games out there that are even more backward than this and they’re from major publishers; and unlike them, the Road Redemption crew interacted with fans, revealed plans and most importantly, took ideas and feedback on board. Name a AAA game that opens not with their smug logo but an open invite to stream their game on Twitch (and warn about musicID)? Or offers you a second game for free as a thank you? They made this the best they could and it’s made by people like me, for people like me so STFU and just enjoy it;

Redemption is hella fun. Sure, most of the complaints are valid, but get your eye in and it becomes a work of messy art, a pure Jackson Pollock to Infinity Ward’s advanced but soulless 3D-Printing. The crashes are sometimes so insanely spectacular it’s like the one good scene in Matrix Reloaded out on the highway. It’s so random, so free-for-all there’s countless opportunities for mayhem, and many just randomly happen – it’s a game than demands you have fun with it; when’s the last time you had a racing game that included power-ups like grappling your bike to a passing helicopter, or outfitting it with a jetpack? What about a race where cars fall from the sky? Come on! This is gold; the silliness is there, you’re supposed to have a laugh and remember the good old days when we didn’t take video games all that seriously. How can you claim it’s not up to AAA standard when all we do is moan about over-marketed, under-produced, for-the-masses guff they churn out? Can’t have it both ways and Redemption is the way I wanna go. It’s a really fun, daft, outrageous game; it’s not Road Rash, it’s Road Redemption – yeah I miss toddling back to my bike and the 90s in general but can’t have everything. If it just let us knock over grannies, it’d be perfect.

2017 | Developer/ Publisher; Pixel Dash Studios & EQ Games

Platforms; Win, PS4, XO

a Blast from the Past review

For saying FBT claims he hates racing games, here’s another one he won’t shut up about.

The Past

Ahh, Road Rash. RR was basically the DGAF of racing games back in the 90s. Before mayhem had to have repercussions, games like RR quietly got on with being really unethical for fun’s sake. You were one of eight or so bikers competing in illegal street races, but this wasn’t cannonball run with some friendly joshing mid trip, there was no Captain Chaos to help; RR contestants hated each other. If you got too close, they’d give you a kick or a punch to send you off and that was if they were being nice. Chains and pipes would often come into play, while CHiPs on Riceburners would clobber you with truncheons and arrest you after you fell off. And it wasn’t just the racers you had to contend with. The tracks which wound their way through close-quarter city streets and open highways were chock-a-block with cars, pedestrians (which you could mow through at the risk of getting knocked off) and other obstacles. It was one of those games you played with mates not against them, all of you going nuts at the screen as you tried to survive a race let alone win it.

I’m going to be in for a rough ride – it’s 25yrs old and all my memories are of moments spent playing it not the game itself. I can’t remember a thing about it beyond crashing and laughing.

Still a Blast?

Yeah, this looks old even though it’s the updated CD version. But the menus are actually kinda cool, someone in the dev team must have got a trial version of that new-fangled Photoshop thingie, as all the screens are morphed and amusingly stretched faces to represent the riders while FMV cutscenes of bikes doing donuts and wheelies set the scene and in no way represent the gameplay.

I enter the bikers clubhouse, pick a race and chat to the other bikers who give comments and advice on how to race. It’s not interactive, they’re all pictures and text but there’s a sense of fun to it, like it knows it’s a joker. I pop into the bike shack and discover a ‘rat’ bike is the best I’ll afford for a while. The superbikes are way beyond my Bad MoFo wallet. Best get some races won then.

Lined up on the blocky road I see my character out ahead of me and the usual heads-up display. A tiny roar of engines and we’re off. And I’m off my bike already. Damn car came right at me. The controls are terrible; it’s largely left or right to get around obstacles that come towards you, a little like a rail-shooter, but I don’t know what else I was expecting.

Back on the bike I race after my rivals and soon catch up and get my eye into it. You can’t really gauge distance or gaps and it moves at such a hectic pace staying on becomes the main source of excitement. Pedestrians hurry across the road and get splattered in a bloodless, basic way and make my bike bounce and I have to recover, but it’s easier than going around them; one touch too far and the bike takes a sharp turn and you’re off again. I do that a lot but always find it amusing. If he hits a car, the rider flies off for quite the distance or slides until a passing car stops him. Once recovered, the rider gets up and trots back to his fallen steed, sounding much like he’s wearing clogs. Another problem / amusement is he’s not very traffic-aware, so will simply run into passing cars or other bikes and get clobbered again. And again. Back on the bike I chase and catch up only to get kicked, punched and smacked with a pipe by my fellow bikers. I respond and fall off again. Kicking tends to throw off the balance when riding at 100miles an hour. But I persevere and amazingly I time a punch as someone swings a pipe and get it off him! Now armed, I take out several riders, watching them fall or go airborne then position myself to run them over as they clog back to their bikes. I also get brave enough to start aiming for pedestrians and timing kicks to send riders into passing cars. It’s mayhem and within seconds I’m off again and I’ve lost my pipe. Good while it lasted. I actually manage to finish Second and think that’s really not bad for a first time in two decades. I’m grinning at how mad that was, the hilarious ‘clonk’ sound the pipe made, the leather-bound punches and yells from riders I kicked, the screams from the pedestrians… It’s all in good sniggering fun. I wanna go again, and chose a longer race, find secret shortcuts and have a really good time being lawless, actively seeking out fights and folks to run over, caring less about winning. I even manage to take out Poncho during one race, kicking him into an approaching car. Such fun.

RR isn’t really a very good game, even for its time. It’s basic arcade level with digitised pictures for car sprites, pixelated messes for pedestrians and basic animation for the riders. The controls are terrible and the physics make no sense; I sent a rider off his bike and watched him sail into the distance until he disappeared. I’d forgotten about him until I saw him still running back for his bike (as in I swerved and ran him over) miles later. But the game really doesn’t care it’s not immersive or refined. That’s not its spirit, not what it’s trying to achieve. This is not a realistic depiction of bike racing or a game for winners, it’s for sinners. What RR wants to achieve is exactly what I’m doing now; Grinning like an idiot.

RR managed 6 games between 1991 and 2000 and there’s been unofficial/inspired-by reboots since, with Road Rage by Maximum Games and Road Redemption from Pixel Dash which was funded by Kickstarter (both 2017) showing it’s a popular underground franchise, and this the original was clearly aimed at the early console era when only one mate had a PS and everyone went ‘round for a laugh. It was the perfect beer and belly-laughs game where a controller would be passed around and everyone gets involved. It was a game for yelling at the screen, accusing it of cheating, watching your mates fail and creasing up at running over a granny.

RR is another one of those games waiting to be rediscovered but only if you discovered it originally, and are tired of moralistic criminal games (GTA5) – it’ll take you back to the time when flattening a granny was okay. For blocky, daft enjoyment, RR hasn’t aged – if you’re willing to go back to that age.

1991 | Developer Electronic Arts | Publisher Electronic Arts

Genre; Racing

Platforms;