Road Rage (XB1) Review

Game Rage.

I’m totally open to trying new and different games. Sometimes this can be both a curse and a blessing. Often times, I find myself stumbling upon a unique or different game that resonates with me, and on rare occasions one that completely blows me away. Looking at Road Rage, I thought “this looks like Road Rash, maybe it will be worth checking out”. It was vastly apparent, from the moment I started the game, that this was not one of those moments.

The world is bad, the riding is worse

There is story exposition and cut scenes that set the precedence of the world and that state it is in. Players won’t care, and the pictures with narrating voice don’t do it any favors in trying to thrill people. Story presentation in the game resolves to still shots of cell phones and voice dialog. This really isn’t starting off too hot.

MSRP: $29.99
Price I’d Pay: $0.00
Multiplayer: Online

“Maybe the gameplay will be good?” I questioned myself. So I dived right into it and the first thing I was hit with is the N64-like thick fog that obscures the viewing distance. Apparently in the future the world is just blanketed with fog everywhere. The race began, and while the driving felt serviceable, the flailing of weapons was silly and almost no skill is required in fighting enemies. Instead, other bikers and the player just bash each other as much as possible till one goes down in ragdoll physics fashion. There are various types of races at least, from escaping the cops to doing stunt work, yet it all feels thrown together so poorly.

Little direction, little incentive, and just broken modes. Running from the cops can be finished just racing off to another area without them and sitting still. Trying to just drive away will make cops randomly appear and reset the avoidance clock again. These events are with difficulty markers, but nothing feels extremely hard.

Visuals here are just extremely poor, the soundtrack is filled with basic rock audio, and voice work that delivers the story via text messages is just all over the place. In some races I found bikes I had passed previously stuck in the ground unable to move. The world is fairly empty with people or traffic. It’s in there, but it’s very limited and the game isn’t pushing anything graphically hard here, fog and all, so it’s interesting to see just how bland this game is. I couldn’t even get multiplayer to load as there wasn’t anyone online, minus one time it got me in a game, told me it was full, and then proceeded to kick me out of my single player game. The only question is why?

Why?

I hate to be overtly negative about any videogame, but Road Rage is a classic example of a game that just disappoints on almost every level. I can’t recommend this game to anyone, not even for a cheap price because it just feels like a game that was made back in 1994, and that’s even a disservice to some of the great games released back then. I just see no redeeming factors for Road Rage unless silly ragdoll physics is a preference. Otherwise, I’d avoid at all cost.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • Ragdoll physics
Bad
  • Voice
  • AI
  • Glitches
  • Controls
2
Insulting
Written by
Justin is a long time passionate fan of games, not gaming drama. He loves anything horror related, archaeology inspired adventures, RPG goodness, Dr Pepper, and of course his family. When it comes to crunch time, he is a beast, yet rabies free we promise.