Road Redemption

Being a spiritual successor is a tough thing to live up to, and Road Redemption almost pulls it off.
The key distinction is that Road Rash was a racing game with some fighting mechanics, whereby in Road Redemption you spend most of your time fighting, with less emphasis placed on the actual racing. Due to this, the racing, track design and bike handling all feel secondary (i.e. worse). It's an arcade racer with combat - think Carmageddon and Twisted Metal except linear.
Combat is actually decent. You have to manage acceleration and nitro on roads that swerve drastically, avoid being surrounded, getting shot at, blocking, attacking and kicking as some enemies auto-block while others resist weapon types, and dodge incoming traffic and general road hazards – all at the same time. It's quite entertaining, if not a bit too much and frustrating at times. Also, it has to be said, but the rooftop levels + hallucination (raining cars) + shielded enemies = a horrible combination.
Variety in bikes (besides looks) is dismal however. Stats between them seem arbitrary and there's little reason to use anything beyond the starting bike. There's no best for speed, or handling, or weight, there's just the starting bike and it being the best all-round. That brings up another issue, perks such as damage, regen and XP gain are not clear - sure there's a percentage, but do they stack and by how much do they increase said stat, what's the actual total?
A missing mechanic from Road Rash is running back to your bike post-crash - this could be out of necessity due to how wonky the physics can be and AI behaves. Getting stuck on the environment can happen, with AI riders overtaking you within seconds placing you last unless you 'return bike to road' via the menu quickly.
This is another issue, the AI racers will always catch up (slingshot) to you. Unless you manage your nitro, it's challenging to stay ahead - as a result, managing nitro becomes a core mechanic. You have to take out enemies or perform near misses to build it up again, in order to move up to the next crowd of racers, rinse and repeat.
However, the opposite is also true, as there are missions requiring you to take out a number of targets. Problem is it's possible to overtake them via a shortcut and not encounter them again due to the levels being linear (and fail the mission). Ironic given the slingshot/rubber band mechanic appears on every other level bar these ones.
Campaign wise, I’m not sure it needed to be a rogue-like. It would've been nice to have one continuous ride with pit stops to spend cash on upgrades before heading out again. As it stands, the rogue-like nature of 'spend any accumulated XP on upgrades and lose what you don't spend upon death' feels like a way to pad out an otherwise short game.
Visually, it runs exceptionally smooth despite all the chaos. However, it does look dated and something that doesn't warrant my 3070Ti running at 90% GPU utilisation. Is it a drawback of the Unity engine or poor optimisation?
Music matches the theme with heavy metal and occasional trance - but be warned, the volume is set too high by default. I'd recommend lowering it, otherwise you won't hear anything else such as the great voice acting. Very Mad Max-ish in the approach to the setting and colourful language used.
Road Redemption doesn't take itself seriously and plays into the fact the game is about being a douche to others on the road. There are knock-off character and bike names such as the Hundo and BMG, you can drift and use nitro while cornering, and it rains cars. There's even a "Name A Character" DLC as a way to support the devs, which adds your name to a random rider that everyone else can pummel - more games need this. Sure the rogue-like nature can be tiring, graphics dated and chaos overwhelming at times, but it does have a certain 'fun' factor that's worth trying out.

this game is freakin awesome, just the single player alone is super fast paced fun, the music is badass too lots of riffage, online needs more players sadly join up boys n girls. UNDERRATED GAME and goes on for sale for FEW BUCKS EVERY HOLIDAY!

I'm coming from Road Rash II and this is everything I wanted in a motorcycle game. Sometimes I think more realistic riding sim would be good but then I'm like, nah.

Love this type of game, as it reminds me of Road Rash on the Megadrive. Happier memories back then.

this game is similar to road rash from the ps1, but it has a more rogue style gameplay which i enjoy, ive had this game in my library since it released in EA, and seeing all the updates has been really cool, i do feel the heart being put into this project, and it is by no means a perfect game, but for the price it is a fun and lovely experience.

Experienced on the Meta Quest 3
You can view my VR mod gameplay here:
Yes, you can play Road Redemption in VR using the VR mod by Astien (search for it). The VR mod is totally free and includes 3rd or 1st person views, plus motion controller support. Yes, you'll be driving in first person, checking your rear-view, while swinging your arms to knock off the police and those other dirt bag bikers off their bikes!
Game not only looks beautiful, but it runs great. I was getting a steady 90 fps on my RTX 3080 with graphics set to beautiful. No issues whatsoever.
Now, not everything uses motion controls. You do button press to kick and you are using the joystick to steer the motorcycle. Still, it's fun to drive in first person and swing madly left and right while trying to stay on the road in one piece. I highly recommend this VR mod! Thank you Astien!
VR Mod Rating 9/10.
I bought this game! If you enjoyed my review, please consider joining my Steam Curator group Oculus Rift Reviews.

Great game where you can kill people as brutally as possible but lacks online co-op.