Game Review: Road Rage (Xbox One)

Seen as a spiritual successor to the immensely popular Road Rash series of games. Team Six Studios and Maximum Games seemingly decided that would be enough to guarantee them sales. Then they remembered a few days before release that they had to actually make a game. This meant we lucky gamers were given Road Rage. A contender for one of the worst games in a while by some margin.

If the government ever needed to get information out of a terrorist quickly I suggest they make them play this for an hour. They’ll have what they need very quickly.

Set in a dystopian police state city that is made up of dark grey buildings and walls (get used to that colour). Road Rage sees you take on the role of a gang member and immediately you’re thrown into the game.

Your first mission is to take down other riders by catching up with them and knocking them off their bikes. Instantly the problems become aware. The bike controls are awful and the amount of glitches in the game will see exploding into a fiery ball for absolutely nothing. While other times you’ll be zipping through lamp-posts and fire hydrants as if they’re not even there. In fact, one time I went through an entire building as if it wasn’t there.

The environment is a mess and if you’re not glitching through it, you’ll be getting stuck on fences. Or bouncing off cars (sometimes they hilariously go flying off) and exploding into a ball of fire by slightly scrapping a wall.

When you get close to another rider you can initiate combat. Which makes driving even harder even though combat is super easy. You have just one attack either side of your bike and one hit will knock them off. It’s the same for you too, one hit and you’ll be knocked off. The terrible AI has your opponents driving like melons constantly crashing into you and the walls. While it’s bad when racing, it’s at its worse when the police are involved.

Trying to ape the likes of GTA, you can get wanted stars by hitting pedestrians and entering areas that haven’t unlocked yet. Cops will try to chase you down and put speed traps in the road but they rarely serve as much of a problem. You see, the police AI is embarrassingly bad and they spend more time crashing into walls. Should they manage to catch you (by running you over) there are no real consequences beyond losing a small amount of money.

The missions are ranked from easy to hard but rarely prove to be a challenge. The difficulties come from bad design such as the in-game mini-map that is impossible to use to navigate. Complete missions until you have completed all seven areas of the game; Subtroit, Chitaly, The Forest, Downtown, Port Hamc, Ruscago Airfield and Farmlands.

Each mission is brought to you via a phone conversation with bad voice-overs but have very little variety. It’s a mix of time trials, stunt missions, knockout (where you have to knock a set number of bikers off), escapes (where you need to evade the police), standard races and a few more. 42 story missions and 56 side missions. With the latter unlocking after you’ve completed the main missions of an area. These are where you can earn extra money to unlock new bikes, weapons, upgrades and customisation options.

The boring, repetitive gameplay and terrible game mechanics would be enough of a reason to stay away from Road Rage but it’s so much worse. It’s such an ugly game and the bike sounds are awful, more like a lawnmower then a beefed up motorcycle.

Road Rage has a multi-player mode but I can’t review it. Simply because no-one else is playing it. It would have been a surprise to have found a game but actually a relief as it’s one less mode to have to play.

The one thing it does have going for it is its music even though there are just a handful of tracks played on repeat. Does that make it worth the huge asking price though? Absolutely not. Road Rage is a shocker of a game.

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