Steam Community :: Video :: Road Redemption Early Access Overview

Store Page

Road Redemption

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Road Redemption > Videos > Godkyra's Videos

Road Redemption Early Access Overview

Road Redemption

View all videos

Award

Title

Description

TL:DW:
Combat is great, tracks are fun, grapple time trial is godawful and AI needs work.

Welcome to batshit crazy - you're all welcome here so long as you have the toys to play with. Toys being Baseball bats, spiked planks, police batons, samurai swords, battleaxes, medieval maces, pistols, magnums, assault rifles, SMGs and grenade launchers. Oh! and C4... don't forget the C4 - you'll need it.

With the clear insanity that is Raining Cars mode and the pure frustration that is Rooftops Time Trial, Road Redemption has made me ?!OMGWTF?! more times than I can count. Sometimes you are driving blind due to the sheer amount of collisions in front of you and make it fine - other times the road will be perfectly clear and then a car will blindside you from offscreen, wiping you out. It's frustrating to start with but soon becomes fun when you get to grips with the actual combat in the game. Not two runs are the same due to random weapon selection and special modifiers to the track generation that frequently throw curve balls at you.

It's borderline roguelike - you get one life to last you some 12 levels (currently) and once you hit 0hp, it's game over. HP is regained by buying it in the shop between levels, or by wrecking the other racers. The latter is also the only way to make cash to spend in said shop.

The shop itself provides either one-shot or semi-permanent buffs for the current playthrough such as a health increase (which lasts until you die and cannot continue) and double damage (which lasts for one mission only. you can also purchase experience, money, health and damage boosters though sadly not specific weapons to start a mission with as yet. This is not so much of a problem in this version of the game since any time you break a weapon (they have durability) a replacement spawns in it's place.

Naturally, guns are tricky to use at first but provide the safest and most reliable takedowns where as melee weapons vary drastically in speed, reach and damage. I currently favour the Battleaxe but like a quicker Tire Iron as backup for the unarmoured racers. The grenade launcher and C4 just demolish everything including the player, if you get too close to the blast.

If (when!) you die, you access the permanent upgrades screen which is your global stats where you can permanently upgrade your heath, bike, ammo, damage, nitrous and a few other nice things. It's not as well fleshed out as it could be but is otherwise well done for the moment.

The ingame AI is both cunning and stupid - a strange dichotomy of "wow, he really got me good there" and "how the F**k did he do that". They know where their turbo button is, and use it *the moment* you pass them to keep up. Typically so they can clock you one with whatever toy they're packing. AI cars come in two forms - passive, which are your general traffic, alongside or oncoming depending on the road generation, and Racer which are like the biker racers but have no attack - they just veer into you trying to ram you off the road (they succeed with alarming regularity). Passive cars are the tricky ones however since if they get knocked off-road, they will literall cut across the road to get back into position - this is usually directly in front of the player making you take yet another flying lesson.

Tracks themselves are pretty sound - all corners can be taken with good use of the brake and there's plenty of terrain either side to avoid in the likely event you find yourself amongst it. It does railroad you some though - going too far from the track (particularly down a hill) seems to be treated like a crash, draining a portion of health and resetting you back on the rails. The exceptions to this are the rooftops where any off-roading is punished by a long drop. It's particularly egregious when you get rammed off the road by oncoming traffic and forced down into oblivion. ON THE FREAKING ROOFS! double whammy health hit.

Combat is the meat and bones of the game and is easily the best part. Hits are satisfying be they ranged or melee and kicking someone into oncoming traffc is not only viable, you get bonus cash for it. The missions where you have to rough up the opposing gangs are very easy with a gun, however, but this is countered for in later levels by Armoured bikers who can take quite a few bullets, and by cars which had to be nerfed because they were so hard to take out without an explosion. On that subject: explosive weapons are great fun to use and suitably risky - they do block vision if they're dropped in front of you and woe betide you if you take a direct hit. Dishing them out feels really good though, until the guy you planted the C4 on decides to give you a hug.

Beyond those thoughts just watch the video for gameplay action and feel free to laugh at my incompetance - it's harder than it looks.

Save Cancel

6	Unique Visitors
0	Current Favorites