REVIEW – Starting by saying that these developers were responsible for Flatout 3 isn’t entirely fair… but then again, the game itself isn’t really intelligent. Road Rage was trying to be The Asylum – that film studio times their adaptations/clones of highly anticipated movies close to their release dates with a lower budget. Team6’s game is just a shoddy Road Redemption clone…

Team6 Game Studios has mostly made games on PC, and most of their products are sub-par quality. I could list a few of them, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Road Rash, which was one of my childhood games roughly two decades ago, got a spiritual successor in the shape of Road Redemption, and with Road Rage, I simply expected a bike racing experience that just clicks together.

Ashen

So this is an open world game set in the city of Ashen. Are at least the physics function? Nah – in Road Rage, even if it was meant to be an entirely arcade-styled title, you shouldn’t be able to do a constant wheelie without any risk of falling. You can hold R2 (the accelerator) and just watch how you can pop a wheelie for miles. Also, who in their right mind decided to put the gas on R2 and not X? X became the handbrake, by the way. I think X/Square/Circle should have been the usual gas/brake/handbrake trio – well done, let’s throw out the regular control scheme the window. The plot? It’s some random gang fighting with a corrupt city and no rules. Something like Ride to Hell could have…

What is my problem with the game? Everything, to be honest. The sound effects are terrible, the background music is boring even for some ordinary soda rock, which just sounds shallow, and the gameplay is on an entirely different level of bad. It’s too arcade… perhaps that’s how I could describe it. At the start of the race, you could easily just knock the other racers off their bikes to win by half a lap even with barely hitting the checkpoints on the track. There are different mission types, too: time trials, defeating the rival band (which is funny, as they all go down with just one hit), and the „stunt” missions with those randomly placed ramps. By the time you get to a stunt mission, your sides will hurt from laughter, or in a better case; you’ll quickly maneuver towards uninstalling Road Rage in the menu.

Fail

The game is ridiculously easy. For me, it was never a challenge to win, which meant that I always unlocked new weapons (which seemed to be only cosmetic differences), upgrade my bike, or use other characters, the favorite being the old retired, walking man from the streets. Why would you deal with these, though? The physics are an abomination, and if you somehow can’t take a turn, you might see yourself fall into a tree, only to be respawned in mid-air. Or, if you run into something, you might explode (!), and then respawn. The AI is so terrible that you can catch up to them with no issues, and they also tend to screw themselves over as well. There were elimination races with the last rider retiring each lap, but somehow I kept seeing their dead bodies in the middle of the road. LOL!

How does the game look, then? Well… Road Rage is on the PlayStation 2’s level with maybe a bit better graphical effects. Visually, the game doesn’t even try to hide that it’s a Team6 production, as it is filled to the brim with post-processing effects. Nasty.

Not even if it was free

Road Rage isn’t an entirely terrible game, but it’s not worth more than 2.5 out of 10. If Maximum Games keeps publishing such garbage, their reputation will end up in the toilet. There’s no danger if you bail – in Road Rash, your bike kept piling the damage, and if you totaled, you had to buy a new set of wheels. Here? No such danger is present. It’s just annoying that there’s likely just one spawn point on the map, and I can’t even think of saying anything good about Road Rage right now. Play Road Redemption. Play ANY Road Rash games. Those are fun, entertaining experiences. Road Rage is just a shoddy clone of these that gets boring in a few minutes.

After this game, I’ll gladly go into Dynasty Warriors 9, which I heard that it has technical issues. Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Same on PC.

-V-

Publisher: Maximum Games

Developer: Team6 Game Studios

Genre: Bike racing

Release date: November 14, 2017