Road Redemption

Road Rash was the ultimate rental game. The Sega Genesis original and its sequels had an attention-grabbing gimmick – a motorcycle racer that let you pummel opponents with metal pipes – and just enough depth to keep you entertained for a weekend. Pretty much every 90s kid played Road Rash, but how many really loved it? Not a lot. Once video game rentals stopped being a thing, Road Rash drove off into the sunset and nobody was that broken up about it.

For as much as I loved Road Rash, it would be hard to go back to after playing Road Redemption. This feels like the worthy successor Road Rash has always deserved. It was a little gem of a series lost in time; the only thing missing is the corny FMV cutscenes.

Road Redemption is a rewarding and excellent throwback to the cult-classic Road Rash series with a few extras to give it its own distinct set of wheels.

Road Redemption is a violent, but wacky successor to the Road Rash franchise born in the 90s. It’s an “over-the-top” biker beat’em up that has some buggy moments, but they make for some of the more entertaining points. If you like the pacing of rogue-likes in a beat’em up wrapper, Road Redemption is worth swinging a pipe at.

Since the original PlayStation, motocross games have been a staple for the console. Time trials, competition, and road races are typically what comes to mind when you think of a racing game. However, in Road Redemption, weapons, fighting, and explosives are what should come to your mind. Road Redemption incorporates the darker side of racing games into its core elements, spicing up the racing genre.

While it may not bear the name Road Rash, Road Redemption is a spiritual successor that channels everything which made the original violent racer a classic.

Road Redemption comes the closest to recapturing the fun of the original Road Rash, way back on the SEGA Genesis. Yeah, I’m that old. My cousins and I obsessed over that game one summer long ago, trying to finish it. We later learned there was no true no end! Ah well, it was good times. So I’m burdened or predisposed, to look upon further iterations of the original game with a built-in fondness. However, nothing that followed the original game has ever managed to rekindle the same amount of enthusiasm. Maybe the original game was a lightning in the bottle moment. A mix of new gameplay we never...

While Road Redemption is far from perfect, it taps the popular rogue-lite experience to create an enjoyable spiritual successor to Road Rash. It’s very rough around the edges, but the cost of entry is on the lower side of things. If you’re itching for that classic motorcycle brawler experience, it's more than worth the purchase.

Road Redemption may offer a fun combat system that fits decently with its racing mechanics but this enjoyment is marred with bugs and an anemic number of modes to actually enjoy it in.

Road Redemption’s combat is a good but short-lived bit of manic fun, but it didn’t offer enough to keep me engaged through the majority of the 13 hours I put into it, and I’m honestly not sure if that would change even with the addition of more to do.

Road Redemption is a fantastic game to play when it works, when it does not it becomes the most frustrating game I have played in a while. The systems in place will at times not give the player a chance to recover or in some extreme cases races are lost before they even begin. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Road Redemption but I cannot forgive some of its technical flaws and because of that I cannot see myself returning to play this title unless these problems are solved.

While Road Redemption does have its issues, it did more than enough to keep me playing. Following in the tracks of Road Rash, it nails that one more go feeling that you can lose so much time to. However, while the core gameplay is entertaining, the surrounding package could have been better with basic online and and a roguelite structure that some may find uninspired. Road Redemption is a mixed bag that is fun to play, but it could have been so much better.