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I definitely have fond memories of the iconic motorcycle combat game known as Road Rash, and it has struck me as odd how some major attempt at recreating that experience hasn't really happened. Road Redemption Mobile definitely takes a crack at recreating some of Road Rash's magic, but it largely falls flat for a wide array of reasons.

Road Rash roguelite

Much like Road Rash, Road Redemption Mobile is a racing combat game featuring motorcycles. This means that as you tear down open roads full of normal, vehicular traffic, you'll also be coming into contact with competitors that you might decide to pass by hitting them with a wrench or kicking them into the path of an oncoming car.

There is a story explaining all of this violent road racing, but it largely just feels like light set dressing to justify the gameplay. Structurally, the game is like one, giant point-to-point journey that is broken up into legs where you are asked to complete mini missions like dispatching a certain amount of rival gang members or just flat-out racing.

Ride or die

Upon completion of these missions, you either receive rewards like money for being successful or lose some amount of your health for failing. From there, you can purchase upgrades from a shop that can grant things like increased experience gain, higher boost capacity, and more before moving on to your next challenge.

Across all of these challenges, your health bar determines whether or not you get to keep pushing forward on the journey. If you wreck too much or are killed by enemies, your run ends and you just have to start the game over from the beginning. After the end of each run, you may have achieved some milestone that unlocks new bikes or riders to play as or earned enough bankable currency to purchase permanent upgrades on a skill tree to give you a boost on each subsequent run.

Motorcycle mayhem

In theory, all of these concepts sound great, but Road Redemption Mobile seems to find ways to bungle almost all of them. The biggest sore spot of the game is definitely its controls. Although this is a port from its console/PC counterpart, there are actually a surprising number of control customization options. Unfortunately, though, none of them feel right. Even if you opt to play with a controller (which is heavily recommended by the game's main menu), you never really feel like you are driving a vehicle. I know this is an arcade game so I shouldn't expect (and don't want) realistic controls, but the driving should feel like driving and it doesn't.

On top of that Road Redemption Mobile is littered with bugs. I've driven clean through cars with no penalty, seen motorcycles spawn right on top of each other and float in air, and had auto-steer controls send me headlong into walls. You can try the first few stages of Road Redemption Mobile to see if you get the same issues, but beware if you decide to purchase as well, as my attempt to buy the full version of the game simply did not work and attempts to use the Restore Purchases button validated my purchase but did not unlock the full game.

The bottom line

Road Redemption Mobile is a pretty big mess, and only partially in the way you want. A spiritual successor to Road Rash should be chaotic and involve a lot of collisions and other shenanigans, but that's only enjoyable if the game feels and plays the way you expect, which is simply not the case here.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/road-redemption-mobile/

When I picked up RUNNER: PREAMBLE, I was not aware that it is apparently a tie-in game that provides some background to an upcoming VR title called RUNNER. In hindsight that makes a lot of sense, but I decided to play this game on a whim because I saw it was free and looked really cool and stylish. And, as it turns out, RUNNER: PREAMBLE is indeed a very cool, very stylish, very free, and very short visual novel experience that is worth checking out for its vibes alone.

Neo noir narrative

RUNNER: PREAMBLE is a visual novel set in a dystopian sci-fi universe where a giant megacorporation builds up settlements on planets in order to strip mine them of resources, leaving everyone who inhabits these planets to be subject to their oppressive will. The game puts you in the shoes of Vice, a man who previously acted as a smuggler but now works for said corporation.

The story begins with Vice coming across some concerning information regarding the planet he resides on and finding himself needing to turn to the smuggler friends he ditched for his corporate gig. It's an all too common setup for these kinds of settings, but luckily the writing behind RUNNER: PREAMBLE gives its world and characters some unique personality traits to keep the entire thing from reading as generic.

Slick style

With this setup you can expect a lot of neon lights, futuristic motorcycles, mechs, and just about every other trope you can think of found in cyberpunk stories. Similar to the writing, these things are all presented with a unique blend of low-poly visuals and 90s-style anime character portraits, both of which are occasionally glitching out as if your own screen is a piece of cyberpunk tech, which is a nice touch.

To add to that, RUNNER: PREAMBLE is fully voice-acted and well directed for the most part. This gives the game some high production values that you don't typically expect from visual novels generally, much less free ones.

Too short, but still sweet

The biggest thing working against RUNNER: PREAMBLE is its length. This is an experience that's pretty comfortably under an hour. In that time it does a great job of establishing its world and the main players in Vice's story, but it goes no further than that. As soon as you are on the cusp of pushing the story forward, the game ends (presumably because the developers want you to be enticed enough to play RUNNER to find out more).

That said, there are a number of neat ideas layered into RUNNER: PREAMBLE's brief runtime. There are action sequences with time-based decision points and some branching dialog that can lead to unexpected dead ends. Through the game you can maintain a ton of different save files and go back and explore choices to see how things play out if you do things differently in ways that are more convenient than many other visual novel titles I've played.

The bottom line

RUNNER: PREAMBLE is a really cool promotional game for RUNNER and I'm glad I played it. Even though it is very unlikely that I will ever play the game it is supposed to be advertising, I had a good time soaking up RUNNER's world for the brief time that PREAMBLE allowed me to, and all without paying anything.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/runner-preamble-review/