To start off, let me just tell you straight up that this game is, objectively, a hardcore racing game. What do I mean by this? I mean think about what actual formula 1, rally car, or motorcycle racers do: they go around a track dozens of times to memorize it and become as efficient as they possibly can by perfecting their lines, acceleration, braking, turns, drifts, etc. This is what realistic racing games like the Gran Turismo and MotoGP series do, and that's what Redout does. This is not a casual game for lazy fun to just pick up once in a while or blast through like a Grand Prix in Mario Kart. It is unforgiving, and it will f*ck you up. In the same breath, it's still fun if you enter the game with the knowledge that you can have a good time even if you don't treat it completely seriously, but also that it's very difficult and you may get trounced. Let's jump right in and address some of the most recurring complaints.

Hey, you're right! Although rather than figuring this out by reading the one-word titles of each game to compare them and realizing that the two words were not identical, I'm willing to bet you spent $35 and several frustrating hours of your time to come to this conclusion. No, everybody, Redout is not Wipeout. Just like Need for Speed is not Twisted Metal. Sure, they both involve driving vehicles that don't exactly look like your step-dad's Honda Accord, but if you bought Need for Speed: Underground and got disappointed when it didn't end up being Twisted Metal: Underglow, whose fault is that really? 34BigThings used the colorful, jet-like hovercraft style seen in Wipeout and F-Zero and, shame on them, made their own game [/s]. It's not supposed to be a clone of anything and you should be embarrassed for feeling resentment or betrayal towards a developer who didn't simply rip off another franchise. Grow up. Or go play Wipeout, I don't care. Both maybe?

There are people who say that the tracks are impossibly hard, badly designed, or that the learning curve is just too steep. Well, I guess that third one is almost correct. But these are comments coming from people who, more than likely, have never played a realistic racing game in their life. I've always loved driving games but I honestly almost put down one of the Gran Turismo games after buying it back in the day because it was "too realistic". You couldn't just decide to pick up the controller and play it for fun; it was hard and required a lot of unbroken concentration, lest you hurl your virtual Sunday driver into a wall at felony-speed.

There are not one, but two steep portions of the Redout learning curve: the first is at the very beginning, and boy is it steep... is vertical an angle? Anyway, have fun bashing into walls for a few hours and toughing out a concussion while you get your bearings and thoroughly wet your feet. After that you'll start winning easier and easier until the second steep section, which is when you're waist-deep in the life-sapping ocean that is top-tier races. I will say that not each track's time trial requirements offer the same ease of achievement, and the AI racers don't perform as well on some tracks as they do on others. But it doesn't ruin the game at all. Looking back at any other game, not just racing ones, some levels just end up easier than others. Deal with it. If anything, the "easy" events give you a fun break in between the grueling norm of late-game difficulty, and allow you to satisfyingly let loose your ever-improving skillz.

As for "badly-designed" tracks or blind sections, no sugar-coating here (not like you were expecting one), this is purely user error. The point of the game is to memorize each track and figure out a way to enter each corner with a combination of drifting and turning without hitting any walls, and commit all of it to muscle memory through repetition so it can eventually be done at blinding speed with no time to react. This is entirely possible early on, especially if you don't shy away from the brakes (which, by the way, also work totally fine throughout nearly the whole game), but gets extremely difficult the more you progress and move up the ship tiers (read: the faster you go), and there's nothing wrong with that. There are some hairpins or S-turns that make you think "there is no f*cking way anyone can do this without slowing down" until you run the track 4 dozen times and finally pin down the entry angle, lane position, drift initiation point, turn initiation point, and drift swap point, all in half a second, to finally make it through at maximum speed unscathed. This kind of experience is not for everyone. But it was done intentionally, and it was done very well.

Stop exaggerating, stop comparing this to Wipeout, no they aren't, and oh yeah, stop comparing this to Wipeout. It's not badly-done, it's the aesthetically-beautiful result of subjective and objective choices. On the subjective side, the polygonal-style of the ships gives them a sort of virtual feel, as you are digitally-reconstructed after being destroyed or flying off into the game's barrier grid. Not to mention each different surface has its own lighting and reflective characteristics, making for a very polished, futuristic, minimalist feel. As for the objective side, let's think about this for a moment: at top speed, the horizon can expand to full-screen in a fraction of a second. How well do you think this game would run if the tracks and ships and scenery were all photo-realistic, intricately-textured objects that needed to load in the blink of an eye, repeatedly? You'd then instead complain that the game was poorly-optimized, that you're going too fast to see the details anyway (hint), that your 1070 sounds more like a 747 and yet the game refuses to exceed that oh-so-sweet cinematic 24fps that you're clearly failing to appreciate. There's a trade-off when it comes to graphics in video games, and with the aim of creating an insanely-fast racing game that wouldn't set the average consumer's desktop on fire, this is what was done. But, that's right, it was done intentionally, and it was done very well.

Well that may be. Idk, play on a monitor and use an XB360 controller. I can't afford a Vive, stop rubbing it in my face already.

There are only a few infrequent issues that I have run into, or aspects of the game that bother me:

- Some inclines or loops are impossible to avoid grinding the ground at top speed, even without boosting. I think pitching your craft should always allow you to avoid touching the ground unless you're at a boosted speed. But I could count on one hand the number of places in the game that this happens, and it's not a big deal anyway. Just annoying in principle.

- Sometimes if you crash after launching from a huge jump, you'll respawn right at the edge of the jump and immediately plummet to your death again to be respawned a second time across the gap.

- After crashing, your ship is automatically steered for the first 1-2 seconds upon respawning, and sometimes brings you unnecessarily close to an edge if respawned on a corner, or fly you straight off of it. I wish they would cut the auto-steer in half, as it is nice to have a bit of help going in the right direction for the first moment.


I love this game. It is supremely fast like no other game that I have ever played, and extremely satisfying once you really find your grip. However, I am one that enjoys transforming repetition into perfection, and those who do not would probably abhore this very trying game. It can be immensely difficult, but dammit if it doesn't get my heart pounding. I can say quite confidently that I am addicted, and I don't want no cure.

NOW DROP IT HARD

10/10