Recent reviews by rebus_forever

A video of my initial experiences with the game can be found here. https://youtu.be/i7BPdxinac0


I prefer to spend 10 hours or so with a game before commenting but as an early impression and wanting to get a some words up while the game is on sale I thought id put forward my contribution, but yeah.
This game seems pretty good, early access gambling aside If you are happy to take a punt on what is already a fairly charming and playable sim game you shouldn't be disappointed.
The only downside to the game is the need to set your timetables within a specific time frame while also the gameplay also encourages a bunch of playing the game at faster speeds to make cash, if the game paused automatically or provided an option to do so my only criticism would be gone, so far anyway.

The game focuses on the management of a train station as the name would suggest with very little management of actual trains, you will be limited to building tracks in a straight line to your station, so far as more traditional transport sim mechanics go, that is about all we have.
Train Station Simulator is a game about simulating a train station, you will be tasked with building platforms, managing staff, providing facilities, amenities and organizing timetables all the while keeping the local ruffians at bay and ensuring you have ample infrastructure in place to allow passengers to travel to your station from the outside world.

The little amount of time I have spent with the game has been a rewarding and relaxed experience with the harder difficulties no doubt providing more of a direct and instant challenge but for the price, especially while on sale this seems like an easy recommend.

Hey there, A Rebus Forever here, a longer review, dare I say- 'RebView' than normal- it’s a bit of an experiment, lemme know how I got on.
Video version here https://youtu.be/7XaTiSXwtlE

I remember owning the earlier games in the Star Control franchise, I associate warm feelings of nostalgia to the series and can see the cases for the games on shelves in my minds eye, the worse for wear definitely but as distinct and clear pieces of my memory, I cannot for the life of me remember a second of the gameplay from those earlier games, as such, I am tempted to go back for a refresher once I get this done, but yeah, if you were expecting a comparison in any way, sorry to disappoint.
I'm also not going to be covering the dispute between stardock and the original creators over who owns what re star controls IP, I did a video on that separately so I didn't have to do that here. https://youtu.be/wULvRnS5cYg

So I'm 20 hours in, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Scryth attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Uxor, I watched Black hole cannons generate the complete opposite effect of glittering in the dark near the Fluorescent Approach Star Base- when you close this video/stop reading this, 20 seconds from now all of those moments will be lost in time like beads of slime running down a Tywoms back.

This is the hardest game to review I have attempted so far. It’s not that I don't think the game is good, I just don't know if the type of good Star Control Origins has is going to be good for everyone, or even most people.
You do “game things” in the game, nothing new, not always well, there’s some killy bits, some talking to things, rarely in that order. A whole bunch of exploring and a lot of mining... like so much mining this game makes No Mans Sky blush.
The game is wonderfully written though perhaps badly paced- depending on your tastes.
If you like your action non stop and adrenaline fuelled, then you are probably better off sticking to watching a Let’s Play on YouTube sped up at least x10 while listening to some speed metal.
The game features a huge living universe, populated by a multitude of alien races, many of whom I have yet to even encounter- without extra fuel tanks and restricted to using slow engines you will be limited to local space. If you are careful when exploring not to waste your time mining every planet because you, like me, failed to notice the game actually tells you how much the value of the minerals on a planet are worth, and thus you frequently spend 5 minutes or more searching for 50 credits worth of iron and landing on every viable planet- even landings can be minimised.
With a discerning attitude to exploration- good progress can be made.
Once you make it through the earlier stages and have discovered a few of the ancient star bases, your range of upgrades and quick methods of getting across space will increase. Over time resource collection becomes a thing you do alongside completing missions rather than instead of. This leaves time to appreciate the excellent storyline- at least so far as I have encountered.
As with many of the elements of the game there is nothing new or exceptional about the story- but the excellent writing, voice acting and even the music help elevate the more generic elements.

Navigation in hyperspace mirrors that of in system flight, with simple controls akin to the Sid Meiers Pirates franchise both in and out of system, with gravitational effects trying to spoil up your intended course here rather than strong westerly gales.
Upgrades improve the handling and speed of both your ship and lander. Flying across large planetary systems hunting down all the moons and planets to make sure you aren’t missing a crashed ship or a particularly rich planet for mining can be a tedious affair, as can the lander missions.
No matter how much you upgrade the lander, you still have to use it.
Using the lander ceases to be fun early and shows no signs of becoming fun again any time in the foreseeable future, the best thing it is possible to say of the lander components is that over time you need do them less as you will be able to strip a planet’s wealth in one trip and make less trips as you upgrade your storage capacity and the range of your mother ship, providing a wider range of resource rich worlds.

The combat, inappropriately named 'fleet battles' consists of a series of 1v1 top down arcadey scraps until one side or the other runs out of ships, initially I was disappointed not to see a more tactical large scale style combat but have actually grown to enjoy it as is. My favourite ship has become one of the most basic since I have learnt to make the best use of its weapons. It is best to keep your flagship out of combat in all but a last resort- once that gets killed it’s game over, man.

As I say, this has been a hard one to decide on and reduce to a simple ‘yay or nay’ as is required for the steam review system. On the one hand, a lot of the game is very basic and like the combat or the lander missions, not even that engaging after the 20th or so time of doing either- but they are acceptable..
Kind of like a plain cracker, almost certainly intolerable on their own but once you add the tasty storyline cheese and other toppings they actually make a pretty decent snack, except in this case I'd say there is just a little bit too much cracker, and not enough tasty topping... still enough to keep me chomping through.
That said, I haven't eaten an actual proper cracker for about ten years because gluten free ones are crap so maybe that's why I'm prepared to give the game a recommend- given the last time we saw a Star Control game released was the 90s.
So yeah, if anyone can recommend a half decent gluten free cracker I'm all ears, wait, hold up, I think I just got lost in my own simile.

For anyone who sometimes enjoys a game where you take things slowly and is prepared to spend a lot of time exploring and mining, allowing you to find necessary upgrades required to really enjoy the game- you should get your money’s worth.
For anyone else who gets tired of grindy activities quickly I would say stay away like really, really, really, really, really, really, really far away; the earlier stages of this game might wear you down and prevent you from enjoying the full experience, it would be no fault on your part if that were the case: go spend your cash elsewhere.
Otherwise Star Control Origins is a perfectly reasonable addition to what I remember of the franchise which I'm almost certain had no shortage of grind itself.
As I so often find myself saying, if you know in advance what you are getting yourself into, this game will eat your time, will give you a brilliant opportunity to catch up on any audiobooks with more attention required during plot reveals and skirmishes with some good time to be had, but just remember, in space nobody can see you impatiently looking at the time.


Thanks for your time, If you like this consider checking the video, if you do, lemme know you came from steam :D

An acceptable Casino game with a raft of social stuff, I was only really onboard for the poker which is fine and uncluttered, I turned off popups and notification after seeing some folks complaining about them.
Here is my experience.
https://youtu.be/1sF5SRfcPG0

A video version of this review is available here. https://youtu.be/y0KXiap-sk8

Do you like spaceships but suffer from a crippling fear of choice? Then this games limited 4 playable ships even after buying the dlc has got your back.
Do you enjoy exploring space but wish space had a bit less space in which to explore?
Do you Like your narrative delivered in such disparate fragments that it sometimes feels like trying to read a book by setting fire to it and trying to read the smoke.
Then Everspace has got you covered on all counts for a 'mere' 37 quid.

Nearly great but barely more substantial than a Happy Meal based on the movie Moon- sadly priced more in line with a restaurant where they trust their patrons with cutlery.

Everspace is a very formulaic game, for better or worse- jump into a sector, explore the handful of points of interest, loot, harvest, dogfight, very occasionally be given a mission to complete, upgrade and jump to the next sector before the devs dispatch the Baddies who will eventually jump in to try and prevent you from noticing how empty the sectors are.
The game features procedurally generated regions of space for you to explore, providing the benefit of no 2 runs being exactly the same with the procedurally generated downside of none of the runs feeling particularly distinct or narratively crafted either- with some runs in their early stages dumping you practically amidst a mass of enemy fighters early on, and other runs failing to ramp up the difficulty with plenty of allies around to soak up the enemy fire and make later nodes feel trivial.
The game features a handful of ships (4 specifically), a roguelike attitude to dying- that is both soul crushing when a good run turns bad very quickly forcing you to start at the beginning, and rewarding when you progress enough in a run to earn a load of cash to buy upgrades on the permanent post death upgrade menu. The crafting and per run upgrades are a good way of providing some engaging busy work, weapon drops are not as common as I feel they could be nor is the range of weapons as broad or exciting as it could be, at least so far as I have seen in my plays. .

The game does so much well, the handling is pleasing and arcadey and reminds me of Descent but feels under exploited by the lack of internal spaces for you to explore with your effective 6dof controls. The lack of variety with the range of weapons and ships to reward obsessive replayability, and the frequent sense when completing all the tasks in a sector that the game is just a lot more empty than it ought to be for its price, does sadly detract from the experience.
The story does seem interesting but I can’t help wonder if there is some unconscious, self referential statement being made by the devs with the protagonist being a somewhat incomplete clone, in space.
Everspace is a fun space fighter rouge alike mix that is largely successful but with nearly every element in the game needing like 10% more substance to become excellent.
It would be great to see a surplus of things to do in each sector with the knowledge the enemy jumping in will force you to choose which points of interest to explore and create a greater sense of agency, compared to the current situation where it’s fairly easy to explore a whole sector without too much effort but feels like crossing things off of a list more than exploring.
It would be nice to leave a sector wishing I could have explored that final wreck or station and feel something rather than have completed an admin task.
Everspace is a good game, it feels like the space shooters of old and is well worth a play but much easier to recommend on a sale, the price of 23 quid is fair but only just and should probably be the total price plus dlc.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a punishment reserved for only the most awful people stored on a planet so cursed by the existence of this device, that all of the inhabitants of that world spontaneously evolved wings so as to never have to walk upon the planet’s benighted surface again. The device, a means of forcing fully a total awareness of the entire scale of the universe in its infinite vastness; every, star every sun, every atom of every being and in that awareness, the knowledge that you, you are nothing, so small, so insignificant so as to be barely considered to have any worth at all; this device was designed to drive anyone mad. Everspace conversely succeeds in making space, the universe, and everything feel very, very small and after a few plays somewhat samey, but the combat is ace, the story- better than it needs to be with the voice acting not letting anything down either.
If you get it in a sale or otherwise don't care about the price you should have some fun, I am, but I got the ultimate edition at 62% off.

Thanks for reading, if you check the video from here lemme know in the comments over on the YouTubes.

I’m not certain If I will get around to a review but here is my first impressions for what it’s worth. A video version of this is available here https://youtu.be/guE9vcW1Gk8

Strange Brigade is Gosh Darn jolly Good Fun with lashings of ginger beer- So Long as you don't spend too much time dwelling on the colonial overtones- Rebellion seem to have made themselves a totally fun 4 player co op shooter with minotaurs, magic, many mummies and more alliteration from the narrator than even I can sometimes handle.
Rebellion- seeing the potential for their game to become another successful entry in the ever popular co op genre- seem to have decided to sabotage their game with a pricing scheme as inflated and esoteric as any of the elements of storyline or the reanimated threats you might encounter in the game.

You got the standard for 40 quid, the deluxe at 65, a season pass at 30 and all the usual dlc no doubt to come.
So far nobody on my steam list owns this game, with the game having less than 500 reviews on steam when I wrote this. It also seems fairly quiet online, especially for a new game.

Anyway, this is a first impression, not a discussion about price, no need to labor a point.

The game looks great, like really nice and runs pretty well on my computer, it appears to have a pretty decent selection of enemies so far- hopefully this will continue through the game.
Perhaps the veriety in enemies matters less when in the midst of combat, with fire traps and rotating blades and special abilities all adding to the chaos- the more hectic moments turn into a reflexive roll and kill sort of rhythm over a more careful selective targeting style of gameplay.
I mostly find myself shooting whatever appears to be the most direct threat rather than overtly observing the detail of the enemy or their specifics of their attacks.
I donno, maybe its just me and you will fare better with standing your ground but anyway, did I mention the cost?

The game comes with your standard choice of 4 playable characters with at least one more provided in dlc- while allowing, perhaps because of a low player base multiple instances of the same character in one game.
This has led to a couple of games consisting of a team of just the generic British red coat fella which would be more of a problem where it not for his character design (especially the jacket), which- due a childhood appreciation of the film Zulu- creates in me a fuzzy sense of nostalgia I assume understandably not shared by the descendants of people from nations occupied by people wearing such things.
It is especially worth mentioning………. the price.

The customization and leveling up feels a bit underdeveloped but there is a necromancer ability allowing you to summon undead allies so for my part I don't need any other abilities or skills to unlock, your millage may vary.
The price tho, wew.

What can I say, I'm only a few missions in, so far I’m really enjoying it, would I have bought it myself at this specific estimation of its financial value, had the key not been given to me by a viewer? nope.
Maybe on sale after the online was near death? Would that be any worse than now? Who knows.
Having read that swathes of content will be held hostage for the season pass owners which would make this game a minimum of 65 quid for the full experience I think someone at rebellion must be actively trying to hurt this games sales, or else they are in a pickle and this is just an act of desperation to keep the lights on, or maybe they are doing so well they don't even want to sell their game?
Who knows, either way, Strange Brigade is a fun game marred by a limited online player base while I was playing and a somewhat higher price than it so far feels it should have..
Its a real shame, I really like what I've played so far but I really don't see this game doing so well- between the price- relative lack of promotion at least from my perspective and the possibility that future maps will split the player base.
On balance, Id say I have a bad feeling about this.

Hold up wait, Did I mention the price?

A video version of this review is available here https://youtu.be/D8APjNQEe-g (tbh, missed a few points in the video included here, probably best sticking with the written review this time.)


Did you like Left4Dead?
Did you like left4Dead 2?
Would you probably like Left4Dead 3?
Then until Valve learns how to complete a trilogy you might as well get yourself some Vermintide.

It’s time to dust off your impractical fantasy weapons and resume your role as the elite Spanish Inquisition’s militant arm of Rentokill.
Returning are ‘fire lady’, ‘short man’, the ‘healthiest Scot’, my favorite: ’not Van Helsing’ and ‘captain generic medieval pikeman’ all coming in 3 flavors once unlocked.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a game based on what has become a fairly well known game style made particularly famous by the Left 4 Dead series with zombies in this case replaced by ratmen and the vile forces of Chaos.
Vermintide 1 was for me a better more enjoyable game than L4D, but suffered from fairly inconsistent performance that would result in fairly choppy combat from time to time, partially the reason I haven't done a video/review on it before, Vermintide 2 seems to perform better on my computer than 1 ever did while playing on ultra now.
The world is beautiful and gross, the combat tense and frenetic- rewarding, well timed use of special abilities; blocks and dodges with weapon and item drops rewarding you upon completion of a mission along with xp, skills, alternative character modes and a crafting system I have yet to even moderately understand.
There is a wide range of enemies from rank and file ratmen and Chaos cultists to trolls and Chaos spawns, each of whom you can stab in the butt.

The game involves a bit of grinding to gain better equipment– better equipment allows you to progress through the later missions found in each of the games 3 individual campaigns, multiple tiers of difficulty also extend replayability. Hopefully more campaigns will be added but I’ve not even begun to find the missions I’ve played boring and I’m 17 hours in at the time of writing this.
So far the worst thing about the game appears to be the amount of time it forces you to look at the end game screen as it tallies up your score and pretends it isn't loading.
Its nice that chat is available on all the screens though so kudos there: games, start doing that more…

That aside, if you liked Warhammer back before Games Workshop did whatever they have currently done to fantasy, this might be one of your last chances to immerse yourself in the world before the end times- at least with such polished, well presented pizzazz.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review, if you liked this maybe consider digging around for more.

A video version of this review is available here https://youtu.be/O2d5lWr2S4I

So eh, just a little one, trying to get as much done while I’m free as possible.
Hope you think it’s okay n stuff.

What makes a good remake?
What even got us into this colossal cash and time sink of a hobby in the first place?
From the early days of arcades, up until the advent of the internet- more often than not- if you played games with friends, you literally did just that.
Can you re capture the magic of those early days of gaming before consoles being connected was the norm?
Games were forced to provide a valid offline single player experience or be forgotten, with few opportunities for post release patches.
A game worked or it disappeared.
Multiplayer back then required no third party team speak apps, you would usually be sitting next to your opponent- for better or worse, a multiplayer game was a shared experience; more tangible and, despite the lesser graphics, more real.

Micro machines world series 2017 is okay, the racing feels fine but is that enough?
The old micro machine games had tons of cars, multiple modes, offline tournaments with the range of offline local game modes open- as a rule to as many players as the console had ports for controllers.

This game features a range of cars, a handful or maps, limited local multi player and a dead online with no real single player campaign or tournament to entertain you while waiting infinitely for a populated online match.
I can’t help but feel that in failing to provide a complete enough local offline experience, the devs might have fundamentally misunderstood not just the appeal of micro machines, but also the nature of the experience these earlier games like the Micro Machines franchise provided.
Expecting an online playerbase without first providing a game that keeps you playing on its own merits, socially or alone is a failure.
Was 2017 too late for a new micro machines? Have we moved on? Was this game doomed despite the best efforts of the devs? - or is this new game just a hollow, multiplayer focused, cash grab of a game with not enough content to keep anybody online?
Was the intent in including only a small fraction of the content and modes of earlier games an intentional act to focus on what the devs saw as the cream of the Micro Machines crop? Or was this just a cynical cash grab attempting to pass a hollow empty, average racing game off as a micro machine game to exploit nostalgia?
I donno, it looks a bit like it.
The old school AI bots are here, you can race as a cobra tank which is “rad”- or some other era specific term- but yeah, you cant play local multi player bar a battle mode, you can’t play online because nobody else is but as I say, the racing is okay.
I had hoped for more, if you don't have any hopes maybe this game is for you?

A video version of this review is available here. https://youtu.be/ndzr9IrB3hQ

Did you like Birth of the Federation but, oh wait nevermind, that came out after.
Did you like Sid Miers Alpha Centuri but wish there had been a galactic stage... aw gawd, that came out after too, jeeze.
Okay, lets wiki this bad boy
“Early 4X games were influenced by board games and text-based computer games from the 1970s.[56] Cosmic Balance II, Andromeda Conquest and Reach for the Stars were published in 1983, and are now seen retrospectively as 4X games. Although Andromeda Conquest was only a simple game of empire expansion, Reach for the Stars introduced the relationship between economic growth, technological progress, and conquest.”
Hu…
So, if you played any of those board games that came out before I was born you should probably like this!

Where Civ 1 was my gateway drug introducing me to a touch of ‘one more turn’ - it was Masters Of Orion 2 that really broke me and retrained my reward centers.
Moving me away from the real time gratification of Dune 2, Megalomania or Populous to the harder appreciation of tech trees and turn based combat- with stats over style gameplay becoming the order of the day provided by the 4x genre- when I look back now I understand clearly how I ended up playing the first Hearts Of Iron and Europa Universalis games, which would if forced into this labored addiction allegory, rate somewhere alongside using a fire hose fed IV to mainline straight into your eyes.

Master Of Orion 2 Is still pretty great- the game will see you installed as the eternal leader of one of a number of interesting pre-defined races, or else a race of your own creation attempting to become the dominant power in the Orion sector. Victory can be achieved by various means, be it old fashioned domination, winning galactic elections or else building a powerful space force and sending said space force through wormholes and messing up the Antareans– more on them later.
The game has a fairly substantial tech tree, catering for a span of development from pre-warp up to building literal fleets of death stars.
Manage diplomacy, espionage, production, ship design and combat well and you too could become the Master of Orion… 2.

All of this should be enough to sate the desires of any upstanding person, but the devs of Moo2 prepared for the onset of the short attention span of the modern age with extra flavor in the form or space slugs and various other original Trek series themed space oddities, advanced tech to be recovered from the mysterious Orion system, random attacks from the advanced Antareans- with GNN the Galactic News Network on hand to keep you up to date on all of the latest developments occurring galaxy wide.

There are many games that walk in Masters Of Orion’s giant footsteps, many of them expanding and improving in numerous uncountable ways on the mechanics found here, but there is still something to be said for the balance set by the original- the cheesy ground battles and clunky space battles have aged like a fine wine to my eyes and work best accompanied by the music from Dune.
If you were born too late to catch the Moo franchise first time round but appreciate some space based 4x goodness, grab Moo2 on steam or gog, dust off your best Palpatine impression and have a blast.

If anyone tries the game based on this, or has some memories of the game, I’d love to hear them in the comments.
Thanks for your time, if you liked this review/video, please check some of my others or consider joining my steam group.

Video version here.
https://youtu.be/7gl74pTFZbY


Did you like Civ but wish it had more panzer general?
Did you like Panzer General but thought it needed more 40k?
Do you like 40k but wish it had more Civ?
AARGH I did this joke last time D:

Bored of 4x games with erratic diplomacy options? Good news for you, there is only war.
Do you have your life altogether with a reasonable sleep pattern and able to channel your energy into productive upstanding activities? Well, say good bye to that, y'all, there is no sleep here, there is only WAAAAARRR!!!

Warhammer 40,000 Gladius- Relics Of War is a pretty neato game, it does the whole ‘one more turn thing’ pretty gud and whatnot.
When I first saw this game I assumed cash grab, I thought it was going to be a budget Civ game with too many game mechanics borrowed from other games on a ‘just because’ basis- diplomacy being somewhat redundant in a 40k game on account of the whole ‘there is only war’ thing, research redundant in a universe where nearly all the races have stagnated technologically with varying degrees of violent dogma reinforcing these rules.
Gladius neatly skips around these issues by either throwing out redundant mechanics, or else sidestepping the issue with the research tree in this game, unlocking a relatively small range of units for each faction but then enabling buffs to those factions that will feel familiar to tabletop players. These buffs are often physically modelled onto the units which is a nice touch.
The game’s city mechanic at first struck me as a bit of an annoyance, but has over time fully engaged some sort of mentat like appreciation for balancing my various cities population, power levels and food production. This is done to ensure an available and willing workforce for your forges, factories and unit upkeep costs.
Each faction plays slightly differently with nearly all of my time spent playing as the Astra Militarum.
The main attraction here though is the combat with no need to thin your paints or shred your fingers cutting up plastic sprue; your units look great and totally at home on the well detailed maps which is almost a shame, as you will rarely be zoomed in enough to appreciate the work the devs have put into the visuals, as you will ideally be busily engaged on multiple fronts by some of the better hex based combat I have had the pleasure of messing around with for perhaps decades.

Keep your expectations in check, play it for what it is and not what it might appear to be and you will have a great 40k themed Panzer General time with Civ elements.
If you thirst for expansive faction customization options, non canonical - heretical tech trees and diplomacy with the Xenos, you should instead of buying this game, report to your nearest Commissar for immediate re-education.


Thanks for checking my review, if you like this maybe dig around for more, or join my steam group.

Welcome to another RebView? Yeah, I think Im sticking with that.
A video version is here https://youtu.be/Mohy-hrNdJQ

I saw this was on sale recently and thought it deserved some love, I actually thought I had already done a review- but I must have held back after realizing doing something like a full review, when a game wasn't finished, didn't really make sense.

Did you like Road Rash but thought it could do with even more beat ‘em up elements?
Do you like beat ‘em ups but think they should have more Roguelike elements?
Do you like Roguelikes but think they need more Road Ra- Arrgghh, we’ve done a loop!!!
Then this is the hyperbolic, road safety, violation generator for you.

Road Redemption is a big ‘ole blast of nostalgia that gets Road Rash right which is something even the Road Rash franchise stopped doing with the last release being 20 years ago or so.
I played Road Rash a lot as a kid and listened to an old best of The Monkees album- I had forgotten this experience until I played this game; mid mauling a policeman it all came flooding back.
Innocent times indeed.

If you spent time playing the Road Rash games as a kid, stop watching/reading this and go buy the game– otherwise- y’know, keep watching/reading please otherwise the algorithm will smite me.
Like, sub, share... blah blah blah...

For those unfamiliar with the Road Rash franchise, it is like any open road racing game but with the addition of brutal combat- Road Redemption is this, only more so. The 20 years or so since the last Road Rash game has brought with it a number of benefits, these come in the form of: moderately improved graphics, integration of Roguelike RPG elements, more decapitations than the French Revolution and a multi player no longer dependent on having a sleepover.
Road Redemption still retains local multiplayer if that’s your thing, with play allowing up to 4 players locally for those lacking any sense of personal space, or else folks who have your pc hooked up to a sufficiently large screen allowing a proper respectful and decent personal bubble to be maintained.

The ‘story’ is as important as it is original, in that the world has had some sort of pickle and consequently went full blown Mad Max, with biker gangs being this world’s absurd solution to the fuel scarcity found elsewhere, that in this manifestation sadly lacks flamethrower metal guitarists, BOOOOOOOO!
So after that bombshell- someone went and killed the leader of an important gang so now you and varying shades of bikers are now all on the trail to catch the assassin and collect the bounty.
Since I’ve already spent more time on the story than the devs- gameplay time!

The game sees you picking from your unlocked bikes and riders, offering perks and nerfs for different playstyles, a permadeath with per run unlocks and perks you can unlock to boost all future plays which helps in making almost every play, no matter how full of fail contribute to your overall future victory.
This system provides a good mix of brutal punishment softened by the reward of becoming incrementally more powerful.
The races themselves consist of a procedurally generated jaunt through different regions, occupied by different gangs with a mix of scenery keeping the game visually interesting but if you are here for the sightseeing you may find yourself disappointed- if not disappointed probably dismounted as some oik will come along and smack your face in.
The combat is a tight affair with numerous weapons including bombs and guns, a decent counter system, grapples and even boss fights.
The rooftop levels are top notch also though fairly punishing the first couple of times you try them. The race variety with missions ranging from a straight up race, to needing to kill a specific number of enemy or the cops all trying to take you down with more besides, keeps the long campaigns interesting.
The races are brutal and ‘arcadey’ in all of the right ways- think ‘correct use of turbo rocket jump and C4’ more than ‘correct gear changes’ and you will be on the right level.

Road Redemption is a top game and a blast alone or with buddies- a must buy for anyone who played the Road Rash games or wishes that they had- and a hearty recommend for anyone else.