Back To Reviews
Rating: Awesome
Road Rash 3D was widely regarded by almost everyone as a horrible game
(including me), but Road Rash Jailbreak restores some dignity to the Road
Rash franchise. It has a lot of flaws for an Awesome game, but it still
manages to be thoroughly entertaining.
The first Road Rash game for the PlayStation was very deep because you
earned money in races and then used that money to buy new bikes or upgrade
your existing bike. All of these features are gone in Jailbreak, which
limits the game's long-term depth. In the new gameplay system, you can
choose to race on any one of nine tracks at any given time. Once you
finish in third place or better on all of the tracks, you move on to nine
new tracks.
While this gameplay system is decent, I would have preferred a cup
system that forces you to race on all nine tracks in order from easiest to
hardest. The cup system would award you a certain amount of points after
every race based on what place you come in. As it is, you "win" if you
come in third place or better, and you "lose" if you come in fourth place
or worse.
The control is much better than it was in Road Rash 3D, but it's still a
little loose. It's good for the most part, but sometimes it seems that
you're swerving just a little bit more than you should be. The control can
become a problem when you have to quickly react to changing road conditions
or swerve to avoid a fight when your health is low.
The in-game taunts are very annoying, and they do a lot to take you out
of the game. Rather than making the characters seem like tough bikers, the
taunts make them seem like total cheeseballs. Do you think that biker
gangs at war with each other would say things like, "Hey batter, batter,
batter"?
Another thing I found irritating was the invisible walls on the sides of
the tracks. The invisible walls in previous Road Rash games were very far
off the sides of the tracks, but Jailbreak's invisible walls are usually
fairly close to the edge of the road. Bumping into an invisible wall does
more than prevent you from moving further in that direction; it also hurts
by always doing one of two things: Making you crash or making you come to a
complete and abrupt stop.
Almost everything that was wrong with Road Rash 3D has been fixed in
Jailbreak, resulting in a game that's less like Road Rash 3D and more like
the first Road Rash game for the PlayStation. The biggest problems with
Road Rash 3D were the slow pace and the lack of combat. Both of these t
hings have been fixed in Jailbreak.
The pace of the game is still a little slow in the first circuit, but it
picks up considerably in the second circuit. There is also a lot more
combat, and this time around you have some control over how many fights you
get in. If you press the taunt button while you're near another biker, it
will anger him and make him more likely to pick a fight with you. This
feature allows you to cut down on the amount of combat considerably if you
just want to race, and it also lets you pick fights with characters that
you don't like. Needless to say, it's an extremely satisfying feeling to
beat somebody up so much that they go flying off their bike.
More than any other racing game series in history, Road Rash gets a lot
of its intensity from the element of avoiding obstacles. Half of the
battle in any race is fully concentrating on the road at all times so that
you can avoid the cars on the road and the things on the side of the road
(like trees and lamp-posts). Your bike seems to be a little bit faster
than all the others, and this is counter-balanced by the crashes. This
could have resulted in a very unbalanced game, but the contrast of your
speed advantage and the crashes has been balanced to near-perfection.
The element of cops trying to catch you also adds to the intensity of
the game. If you crash with a cop nearby, you're busted and the race is
over. It's sometimes dumb luck if you crash with a cop nearby. On the
other hand, the presence of cops makes the game a lot more frenzied than it
already is. You're always worried about crashing while playing the game,
and it makes you even more worried when there's a cop nearby. Cops are
also tougher than the other bikers because they sometimes carry devastating
weapons that are kind of like stun guns.
While I'm on the subject of cops, I should also mention that there is a
cool cop mode in the game. You play as a cop and have to either knock out
a certain amount of bikers within a time limit, or knock out one specific
biker. This mode is nowhere near as fun as the main game, but it's still a
nice diversion if you've gotten tired of the main game.
My first impression of Jailbreak's alternative soundtrack was that it
sucked, but I liked it more as I listened to it more. Some of the songs
still suck, but there are also some that are really good. Most of the
songs fit in with the mood of the game very well. There is also a
convenient jukebox feature that lets you disable songs that you don't like
so that they never play again. Combine the jukebox feature with the fact
that there are 18 songs in the game, and you'll probably never get tired of
listening to the same song too much.
Two other things that Jailbreak has going for it are the well-designed
courses and the spectacular crashes. There are lots and lots of courses in
the game, and they get longer and tougher as the game goes on. It's also
nice that you're going from Point A to Point B in the courses, not doing
multiple laps on a track. I don't think that the crashes are as good as
the ones in the first Road Rash game for the PlayStation, mainly because
there's no semblance of realistic physics. They're still pretty damn good,
though. It's also nice that you can manually run back to your bike after
crashes (rather than magically teleporting to it like you did in Road Rash
3D).
Weaving in and out of traffic, fighting other bikers, and avoiding
obstacles on the side of the road- it all comes together to create an
extremely intense experience. The high difficulty level of many tracks
will keep you coming back for more, creating an extremely addicting
experience. Maybe I just like Road Rash more than most people, but I truly
believe that Road Rash Jailbreak is an excellent game that's well worth
buying.
Send your thoughts on this review to ivan@mastergamer.com
Back To Reviews
© 2001 ivan@mastergamer.com