Recent reviews by steven.allick

This is the first game that has actually prompted me to write a review on Steam, despite me being a member since 2004 and playing many great games on here! I loved Road Rash back in the day owning every version there was across the mega drive, 3do and PS1. I still think it is a disgrace the game was killed by EA and never saw a remake or sequel, a real missed opportunity, guess they can’t see past their endless versions of Fifa etc.

However, I am very pleased to report that road redemption captures that road rash magic and brings it into the modern world with aplomb. The racing is fast and fun with busy roads making just finishing alive a real challenge. Though it makes the game initially VERY difficult, the one life system does make the game more tense and challenging, adding a necessary sense of danger and a very real failure state. The combat is great fun and feels weighty and satisfying and it is addictive chaining kills and trying out all the different weapons. The guns are very good too but it is a bit disorientating when the camera moves with aiming, at least you can re-centre it (press right stick). And the C4 is just pure genius, that stuff never gets old!

However, whilst I adore this game already and think the developers are doing a great job, I do think the game still needs some work to be ready for release and there were a few things that puzzled me and things that just didn’t seem quite right, both in terms of design and the actual game engine.

The first ‘issue’ struck me quite early, I was driving alongside a police bike and hit a car and came off my bike, right I thought I’m ‘busted’ (as in road rash) but absolutely nothing happened, the police bike just went by. After extended play I realised the police bikes appear to be a different character and bike skin and nothing more. This is a huge missed opportunity IMO as the constant threat of being busted if you come off your bike was a major gameplay hook in road rash and could be here too.

Another thing, which isn’t a fault as such, but just felt weird compared to road rash was having cars (and sometimes even trucks etc) take part in the race. It just doesn’t seem a fair match and the way the cars in the race tend to slide from one side of the track to the other is distracting and just looks weird. I know the game is going for the arcade vibe but you can go too wildly unrealistic too, the cars shouldn’t be able to move like the bikes, they are much bigger and heavier.

There is sometimes just too much going on, too much carnage, too many cars, bikes, riders etc flying around. When these moments of pure carnage happened (particularly on the car rain tracks and the ones with explosives on the track) it kills performance (even on a pretty good PC) turning the game into a slideshow and making survival partly dependant on luck, which IMO is wrong, in a racing game like this it should always be skill, not luck that gets you through. Don’t get me wrong, avoiding a car landing on your head or some C4 is great fun, I’m not saying get rid of the car rain/explosives type levels, just make them a bit less frequent (or reduce their intensity a touch) and make the core (racing/brawling) gameplay the game’s main focus. I’m just saying scale the whole destruction and wackiness thing back a bit, because the game doesn’t really need it, it can be enjoyable (and sometimes best) without it, road rash never had those things going on and never needed them either, the core mechanics of racing coupled with fighting is engaging enough.

The graphics are really impressive, especially for an early access title but there does seem to a bit of a lack of variety in scenery and locales (the rooftop tracks seem worst for this). Hopefully, the final release will see some more track types, the city levels in road rash with pedestrians, heavy traffic and tighter inner city roads were great and a nice green countryside type track with rolling fields and hills would really enhance the experience too.

As enjoyable as the career mode is, it currently is a bit short and lacks a real sense of progression from one event to the next, they get harder sure but with road rash the races actually got (much) longer too so aspects of survival (vs getting into a lot of fights) and trying not to come off the bike really started to play a part. I’d really like to see the races/events become bigger and longer as you move through the career mode giving the player a real sense of progression.

Lastly, in technical terms the game is superb for early access, no outright crashes at all. A few occasions on the roof top events when riding between the two buildings I fell down the middle of them, the game didn’t put me on the track (I was just stuck ‘in’ the building) using the option to reset back to track was tried several times but each time it just put me back in the middle of the gap between the buildings and I fell to my doom over and over until I ran out of energy. This only happened a few times but made me extra careful to time my jumps right!

Overall, sorry if this seems a negative review as I think the game is great already and seeing a road rash homage is a personal dream come true. I would recommend it highly as it is right now, I just really want to see the final release be as good as it possibly can be.