Road Rage Review (Xbox, PlayStation & PC)

A small piece of my heart remains lost in the memory of Road Rash’s patched leather jacket and its post-race live action sequences. An even greater part of my heart remains tied to the memories of the ride—the polyphonic exhaust, the endless clobbering of a biker chain, and the black and yellow jacket that always seemed to overtake me at the final corner. Road Rash embedded a trove of good memories in my childhood — so many, in fact, that I often wondered whether or not it would ever amount to anything greater, or, at the very least, latch onto a worthy successor that could bear the brunt of the weight and take the concept to a whole new dimension. Road Rage, unfortunately, wasn’t what I had in mind.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t leap at the opportunity to don the leather jacket and jump back into a biker gang for a second time. Road Rage promised me that, as did it choose to represent the same outfit with almost all of the same signs and crests. On paper, it made itself out to be the next in line to magnify Road Rash and to be a modern successor for a series that had its exhaust clogged several years prior. Clearly, it should have been the glue that would cement over the gaps and fill a void. The problem was, it wasn’t Road Rash. If Road Rage turned out to be anything at all, it was a complete and utter disappointment.

In any case you could say that Road Rash is an easy game to imitate. Hell, if you can provide motorbikes, on-road combat, and a decently-sized world to romp around in, then you should be on the right track. The thing is, Road Rage, while still in possession of all of these things, lacks that one crucial ingredient that made the original Road Rash the greatest of its kind: a strong backbone. Sure enough, it has all of the pieces of the puzzle, yet it doesn’t have the slightest clue how to compile them to form a complete picture. From its underwhelming world design to its half-baked gameplay, its repetitive missions to its copious amounts of technical bugs — Road Rage, sadly, fails to hit the mark at every junction.

As a die-hard fan of Road Rash, I wanted to love Road Rage, as did I want to take the time to bypass all of the technical hiccups so that I could enjoy the brief spells of vehicular combat and biker-related material. The problem was, in less than five minutes, the wheels began to fall apart, and the cracks soon became a little too big to ignore. The handling of the bike was messy, and annoyingly, the combat—the one aspect that it should have gotten right—was unnecessarily sloppy. Paired with a barren landscape and a lot of A-to-B missions and loose plot points that had no real stake in the overarching storyline, it failed to capture the spirit of a cult classic, which ultimately led to a series of tedious episodes and asphalt-sparked meltdowns.

After being subjected to a drawn-out tutorial to learn the basics—an event that made little to no effort to fill out the basics or clue me in on the story—I was put behind the throttle of a bike and told to wage various wars across a city. It didn’t hook me with a captivating plot, nor did it make an effort to season said plot with NPCs with redeeming characteristics. Instead, it gave me a brief overview of the world, a floaty bike, and a handful of circuit events to sink my leather gloves into. And, to be honest, I was able to gloss over that. Sadly, though, the roadblocks were inconveniently prevalent, and the journey only managed to get worse as I plowed further and further through the boroughs.

Road Rage’s adoption of an open-world setting should have been the icing on the cake. As it turned out, though, it had little more to offer than seven dense layers and the odd collectible. It had no side quests, no challenges, and, in short, no reason to exist. As a result of that missing chunk, I had no reason to venture away from the beaten path. A mission would pop up, and, after smashing into countless walls along the way, I’d reach the final destination to accept it. A brief description would then illuminate some vague details, and I’d be sent on my way to tackle whatever it had to throw at me. The problem was, none of it made sense.

As I said, Road Rage is a game that tends to stumble a lot. Take the missions, for example. In several cases you are tasked with eliminating rival gang members or, in some instances, retrieving files, planting bombs, or fleeing from various anchor points around the city. However, what should be an exciting action-oriented experience ultimately falls on deaf ears. Rather than adhering to the rules of each mission, you are simply racing across various tracks and engaging in wooden battles. You are not filling the criteria of the mission; you are doing something else that has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever.

As much as it pains me to say it, Road Rage isn’t exactly short of technical bugs, either. To think, riding should be a pleasant experience in a game that quite literally pours its heart and soul into emulating the thrills of blitzing through the streets aboard a bike. In reality, though, it just isn’t a fun experience at all. The upgrades, for example, hold no real value, nor do they alter the gameplay in any way whatsoever. Given that the world is so densely packed with tight corners and zigzag formations, at no point are you ever able to squeeze the throttle and take full advantage of your souped-up bike. But what you can do, on the other hand, is helplessly watch on as your bike collides with the wall at various speeds. It isn’t only you who does this, either; the AI riders are as equally incompetent.

In addition to its wonky riding mechanics and its lack of a pulse, Road Rage has some god-awful combat. Say, if you hit another rider, you don’t whittle down their heart points—a system that is about as pointless as the game itself—but immediately knock them down to the ground, and then subsequently fall over their bike. To that end, everything you do in a race comes with some sort of drastic penalty. Even with an AI that is futile and idiotic, winning a race never feels good, and upgrading your bike with your winnings never has a positive impact on your future performances. It all just feels, I don’t know, pointless. But that’s Road Rage, in a nutshell, sadly.

Verdict

Road Rage might have had good intentions to reignite the flame beneath Road Rash’s asphalt kingdom, but the end result is sadly a far cry from what made the original series the cult classic that it was. Marred by some god-awful world design, shoddy mechanics and nonsensical missions, Team6 Game Studios fails to deliver a compelling game that has the potential to dethrone a timeless franchise. It’s a shame, too, as it could have been a brilliant spiritual successor. The fact of the matter, however, is that it just isn’t the be all, end all of Road Rash-inspired underdogs.