Road Redemption’s proven me wrong quite royally. When I first saw the Kickstarter campaign for a spiritual Road Rash sequel I thought it looked opportunistic and set to fail – none of the team were linked to Road Rash and their experience of game development looked to fall short of what it’d take to make Road Redemption a reality.
Seeing the new trailer it’s clear I was completely and utterly wrong. I can’t wait to boot it up and start cracking bikers’ heads while bombing it down a motorway dodging raining cars.
Taking the core concept of Road Rash – gangs racing along the motorway in illegal races, doing whatever’s necessary to come in first (even if that meant smacking each other with bats) – Road Redemption has added a host of features not possible on computers back in 1991.
For a start, the game’s in full 3D with joyful ragged physics. When knocked out riders ragdoll off into the dirt, bumping a tumbling till they lie still. Go head on into a car and you’ll be flung over its bonnet, practically flying, until you smack into the tarmac a hundred foot from the crash.
Those physics also allow for new modes like the raining cars mission. It’s like racing in the middle of a Hollywood movie tornado, cars fall from the sky, bouncing and exploding across the road, obstructing your way.
See some of it in action the Steam Early Access trailer:
Other modes have all the car AI taking a disliking to you and driving across lanes to try and take you out. Another has the cars take a disliking to each other, forcing you to dodge between spinning wrecks. There’s even a mode where you race across rooftops, smacking each other while dodging heating vents.
Early Access will see a lot of new features added to the current build, full online multiplayer and a single player campaign, as well as a skill tree to research, too.
You can read more about it on Road Redemption’s Steam Store page.