Road Redemption: A Road Rash Ripoff Or A Worthy Successor?

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts floating around on various social media platforms regarding the return of “Road Rash”, a game that a lot of us remember very fondly. I personally spent a lot of time playing the demo version of the game(demorash.exe <3) until I managed to “procure” a copy of the full version, into which I dumped even more hours. But here’s the thing, people just see comparison images of the two, similar sounding names and lose their minds because “ERMAHGERD CHILDHOOD NOSTALGIA IS COMING BACK, IM REAL 90s KID!”. So let’s clear up a couple of misconceptions about the game and whether or not it is worth the hype surrounding it.

Thwacking someone with a chain was always so satisfying.

This is not Road Rash. This is a spiritual successor to Road Rash made by Pixel Dash Studios and EQ Games and it all started because of a blog post back in 2009.  In 2013 the game was officially announced along with  Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $160,000 that was exceeded by fans who wanted a modern take on their beloved childhood game. Slated for an August 2014 release the game was pushed back several times with a proper playable beta being released as an “Early Access” title on steam in September of 2014.  It was then speculated that the game would release in 2015 but once 2015 came around, the lack of updates from the devs led people to believe the game would be canceled. A year later in April 2016, they released an update along with information that the game would release in Fall of 2016 but yet again, they failed to meet the deadline.

I had been following this game ever since the Kickstarter campaign was announced, I played the alpha versions and, I played almost every beta version until around the time the updates just kinda slowly stopped and was very disappointed with the game. I felt that it would end up like many other nostalgia cash grab games that have been forgotten to time. Performance was poor throughout this period, there was not much replayability and the game felt very shallow. I had this game in the top 5 of my Steam wishlist but it left me very disappointed and my interest dropped in the game slowly faded away. That is until his month.

The developers announced that the game would exit “Early Access” and would officially release on October 4th 2017. I heard the news and was quite skeptical but decided to give the game another go and boy was I shocked. The game has drastically improved from when I had last played it. Every issue that I had with the game was fixed. Performace has been great, it has tons of replayability thanks to its rogue-lite gameplay, it not only has melee weapons but also firearms that work really well, cops on bikes and in cars that are still a nuisance, other bikers that are out to smash your head in and not to mention 4 PLAYER SPLITSCREEN. I CAN FINALLY SIT DOWN AND PLAY THIS GAME WITH MY FRIENDS ON A SINGLE COMPUTER! It also has online multiplayer, a single player campaign and probably the best feature that is yet to come, official modding support. The game now truly feels like a worthy sequel to Road Rash.

The game in its current state is very playable and you can play it right now if you want, even if you have a computer from 2010 which has decent specs, you should be able to run this game. For all you Linux and Mac Users, the good news is that the game is also available on those platforms. And for the love of Road Rash, please support the devs and buy this game. They’ve put in a lot of time and effort into making this game what it is today and it would be a damn shame if they weren’t rewarded for it. It’s currently available on Steam for Rs 565 which isn’t a lot of money for most of you 90s kids out there so why not show the devs some love while you relive some of your best childhood memories again?

So there you have it, everything you needed to know about the “new” Road Rash game. Also if you’re curious if the game will be available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, then fret not as they will soon release it once the PC/Mac/Linux launch is done.

Road Redemption Steam Store

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