Road Rage, a spiritual successor to Road Rash, is out on PS4. Is it a happy reunion or nothing but a rage trigger? Find out in our Road Rage review!
Road Rage is an over-the-top, knock-down-drag-out motorcycle combat game that tests your skill on a range of badass bikes. Race, fight, and hustle your way through the ranks of an insane outlaw motorcycle gang.
• Extensive Gameplay Variety. Play 42 story-driven missions and 56 additional side missions ranging from delivery and escort jobs to combat races to all-out gang brawls!
• Open-World Exploration. Joyride around a massive city and discover a wide variety of missions and objectives throughout its distinctive neighborhoods.
• Insane Weaponry. Equip yourself with a range of weapons for knock-down-drag-out encounters with rivals on the road!
• Ride in Style. Choose from a variety of motorcycles and customize your bike to suit your style.
Road Rage – Launch Trailer | PS4
I wasn’t expecting to play Road Rage on PS4, but I was then offered the chance to play it for our review. I loved Road Rash when I was young, and the promise of an open world version of that sounded awesome – I was definitely looking forward to diving into this one!
Road Rage quickly drops you into the city of Ashen, which has fallen on hard times and is now overrun by biker gangs. You get a bike and a weapon, and you’re then sent to take out the gangs. From there, most of the story is presented through text messages on a cell phone. It’s a basic setup to get you going, but it immediately highlights some of the problems with the game. The setup is generic, with poor visuals and bad voice acting. Overall, the story doesn’t go anywhere interesting, and there really is nothing to drive you forward.
The game throws you into its different gameplay modes very quickly, all with the same basic controls. There are races, elimination races, assassination missions, stunt modes, and super frustrating escape from the cops mode. For the most part, they all focus on taking down other bikers while racing to the finish. As you play, you’ll realize that find the missions will get very repetitive very quickly. The mechanics for driving the motorcycle and swinging your weapon, just as simple as the game itself.
When not on a mission, you can drive around a fairly empty open world, looking for your next mission. The world is plain, dingy, and honestly just not fun to travel around. The world is also gated off into different zones that you can’t enter until reaching specific story milestones. In 2017, it seems like a lazy way to keep players out of some areas. As you can’t get off the bike, there really isn’t a way to fully explore the world or a reason to do so.
One thing that the game does get right to a point is the bike customization itself. While I didn’t feel a difference in the handling of the bikes you can purchase, you can customize the parts for it and the colors. While the game doesn’t give you a chance to create a character, you can purchase additional rider models. You can also purchase different weapons, including bats, pipes, chainsaws and other swingable items. Once again I don’t feel a significant difference in the way they feel as you play.
As mentioned , the graphics really aren’t great, and look like early PS3 visuals – very brown and dingy. The few cutscenes aren’t much better either with all the characters looking dull and lifeless. From a sound perspective, the voice acting is also dull and lifeless as well. Songs in the game aren’t great and seem like ripoffs of older rock songs, which are just different enough to not get sued, but close enough they invoke the popular songs we are thinking of.
The game has a Platinum trophy that shouldn’t be hard to get… except for one trophy – I actually got about 30% of the trophies in the first 15-20 minutes of the game. Getting most of them will be really easy, but there is one trophy for hitting 1000 civilians while driving your cycle.
Final Thoughts
I thought I was going to enjoy Road Rage, but, unfortunately, I quickly discovered the game wasn’t great. It has a bland, uninspired open world with no incentive to explore it, repetitive gameplay, and bad acting. The only thing I thought was good was the bike customization, but that can only take you so far in this world. There are plenty of other ways you can spend your time on PlayStation 4, so be sure to stay far away from this one!
Disclaimer
This Road Rage review is based on PS4 copies provided by Maximum Games.
