Ok, so I have been playing Road Redemption since I picked it up early access during the Summer Sale. There were some out of memory errors for a while, but these have been corrected with the July 8 patch. The game runs fine for the most part on my 8 year old computer, although it still crashes once in a great while. It works great with my xbox 360 wired controller. It uses literally every button on the controller too. There’s left and right attack buttons, block and kick buttons, accelerate, tight turn, jump, etc.
I haven’t seen a ton of videos out for this game so my wife recorded me playing and I posted them to youtube.
At this point the game is very playable, and I have unlocked Campaign+ mode, although multiplayer and quick race are unavailable. The difficulty is kind of unbalanced, as sometimes you’ll just generate a really hard set of conditions, and sometimes easy. The devs have said they’re working on balancing.
I loved Road Rash, but I remember hitting maybe 5-6 people on the longer races and knocking 3-4 of them out. As you can see in my videos, you are cracking skulls left and right in this game. You’ll smack down a dozen or more guys every race.
One thing is I hope they ease up on the traffic a little by release. The traffic in the last few levels is all over the place and very fast and heavy.
So here’s some videos to check out and see what I’m talking about. My wife recorded them with my ipod touch, so the quality and steadiness are not that good, but you can at least see what the game is like. I have most of the permanent bonuses by this point.
This was played on a Win7 32 bit system with a duo core 3.2, a radeon 4870, and an xbox 360 controller. And I run it in 1920x1080!
I think it's due out later this year (oct?) but if I go check it i'll miss the edit window.
Tried it a few months ago and found it more annoying than fun. Controls which made no sense (X to kick left but A to kick right? Why not B?), some controls not even marked (Right Stick functions), no way to remap controls, mission goals which made no sense (e.g.: destroy cop vehicles to get their attention; what, they don’t see this maniac trying to Evel Knievel over their roof?), etc.
IIRC, the very first review is from the devs themselves: “10/10 would code again”. Didn’t notice that red flag after I bought the game.
First game I’ve had refunded.
ETA: just remembered that dev account spamming me with friend requests. Ended up blocking them.
I thought the game looked fun, but I was leery of the early access-ness on this one. From what I saw in your first video, they have a good idea but not a game yet, which was how I felt watching their videos on Steam.
Glad you’re having fun with it and I do look forward to the actual release, hoping that they’ll polish this properly by then.
Why did you buy this game if you knew it was early access? It sounds to me like most of your complaints are inaccurate or rather petty. There aren’t left and right kick buttons, just attack buttons, and I don’t have a problem with how they’re placed. All the right stick functions I can find are move camera, which I don’t use as the default view is fine. It sucks that the control remap is not in place yet (it’s “coming soon” in the menu), but I think the game works fine with the default xbox 360 controller settings. The mission goals complaint is nitpicky, you have to raise your wanted level, and the other mission types are race, race the masters, time trial, and take down.
If you didn’t like game play you didn’t like it, but I wonder if you understand that when you buy early access games you are getting a game that’s still in development and may be buggy, crashy, and missing features. I’ve had medium to minor issues with it but it’s by no means unplayable or anything.
I expect games to make sense and be fun, even in early access.
Attracting the attention of the police by bumping their cars makes sense; attracting their attention by repeatedly bumping their cars until they explode does not.
Taking down opponents is fun; finally pulling next to an opponent only to be forced off into the dirt & brush by a sharp turn nearly every single time is not.
Crashing in that dirt & brush then being reset on the road makes sense; being reset on a completely different road which ends at sudden vertical drop does not.
If your game is developed enough to be released for money, even as Early Access, then it’s developed enough to be criticized for problems. I’ve never played Road Redemption and hope it turns into a good game since I loved Road Rash back on the Genesis, but the whole “It’s early access” excuse never washed well with me.
Ok, that makes more sense to me than what seemed to be control nitpicking. Not that you owe me an explanation or anything, it’s just that I’ve seen a lot of early access games bogged down by unfair criticism from people that don’t understand what ‘early access’ actually means.
(Politely) Disagree. All of the early access games I’ve bought into on Steam had forums full of people that seemed to think they were buying a game that was basically one step from completion and required only a few minor tweaks to complete. But you’re paying for a game that’s still being developed. It’s going to have bugs, crashes, etc. There may be huge swaths of the game that are missing. Features may not work right, be changed or even removed. If you don’t understand what you’re getting into, wait until the game is finished and check out the reviews/videos.
I look at early access as a way to help the devs finish the game, either through constructive criticism, reporting bugs/errors, or just paying for the game to support the devs so they can finish it. I don’t usually buy in unless it’s on a super sale or it looks good/interesting enough that I think it’s worth the risk. I don’t see the point in getting into flame wars over “broken” things that may or may not be fixed by release. That is not what early access is about to me.
I feel that you’re italicizing the wrong part. You’re paying for a game that’s still being developed. If it’s ready enough to take your money in exchange for the game, then it’s ready enough to be criticized and have its value for your money judged. Several EA games have acknowledged this of sorts and made the EA version pretty cheap, saying that the price would increase as the game became more finished. Maybe you’re not getting $20 worth of value but you’re getting $6 worth of value until the game has more features added. Besiege is a good example.
Saying that a game in its current state is a poor purchase for its current asking price isn’t “flaming”, it’s giving an honest assessment of the game. “Early access” isn’t a defense; either the game is worth the asking price or it isn’t.
Again, I’m not speaking specifically of Road Redemption. I haven’t played it. I hope they get it running into a successful game. But if they’re willing to pocket twenty bucks for it then they better be giving the buyer $20 worth of game, not $7 worth of game and a lame “It’s Early Access!” excuse.
Yeah, seems to me that this game was put up for sale a bit too early. They could have at least ensured the respawn went to the correct road instead of a side road. I know it’s a side road because the main road has a truss bridge over that vertical drop.
Not to mention the oncoming vehicles crossing the center line seemingly at random to insta-kill the player, the camera getting pointed skyward pretty much whenever the player bumped into a vehicle’s rear, the player sinking into some rocks whereas other rocks would wipe him out simply by being in close proximity…