Sleeper of the Week: Road Rash (3DO)
Sleeper of the Week: Road Rash (Panasonic 3DO)
Like beating people with pipes and chains? Kicking them off their motorcycles? Listening to heavy metal? If so then Road Rash for the 3DO is the game for you! A successor to the older Road Rash games on the Genesis, Road Rash follows the same style of high-speed motorcycle racing and random violence as the other Road Rash games. But don’t expect your standard racer here. It’s not just knock the guy over and win the race…there’s some depth to this game!
Right from the get-go, Road Rash has a lot more personality than the other games in the series. With better artwork, the addition of a plethora of interesting characters, and the ability to buy new and better bikes, Road Rash for the 3DO reaches a depth that most modern racing games fail to achieve. Sure, there are only 20 or 25 bikes, but they make a huge difference in the game. When you win or lose a race, an FMV (full motion video, i.e. live action) clip shows of your character, and its generally quite humorous. You can be arrested by the police, who beat you savagely, also filmed in live action. The cut scenes are hilarious and quite well done. You can talk to other racers between races, but most of then just get angry because you’ve beat them! Road Rash is definitely a tongue in cheek biker game where all bets are off once you hit the road.
Where gameplay is concerned, expect to be surprised. When you first play the game, it seems fairly simple. The polygons for the environments aren’t exactly seamless, the detail level isn’t too high (of course we are talking about the 3DO), and there’s a lot of grainyness here and there. But none of that matters once you win a few racings. The thing about the 3DO version of Road Rash is that it’s absolutely blazing fast! It’s easily the fastest racing game I’ve ever played, and while it doesn’t seem so at first, after a couple of bike upgrades, you’ll literally barely be able to control your bike due to the sheer speed of it! Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not poor controls. It’s designed just like a real bike, where the faster you go, the less control you have. At a certain point, you can no longer make fast corrections to your course without biting it…..hard. And when you crash, you’ll go flying through the air like a bullet! Your biker might actually fly a couple of blocks before running smack into a person or a car or a building. In addition, you’ll drive through cities and country, and cross traffic will invariably get in your way. Few racing games have mastered the art of throwing cars at stoplights into the mix, but Road Rash does it and does it well. You’ll be racing through town at 140 MPH and all of the sudden there are two cars in front of you stopped at a light and three others crossing across the road! Expect some daring maneuvers to whip past cars. And the cars honk at you and slow down to avoid hitting you, throwing off your careful on-the-fly calculations. It’s a very immersive experience for the 3D0.
On top of that, the game comes with a soundtrack of all of the music, with some great metal bands on it, and if you pause the game and leave it sit, it plays music videos as a screen saver! The music is exceptional, though the graphic detail is of course a bit sub-par. Rarely has a racing game been so simple and so captivating. I personally find it to be easily on par with Rock N’ Roll Racing or San Francisco Rush 2049, two of the best racers out there. And for the price you can’t go wrong! Road Rash for the 3DO averages around $10 complete in general, with the music CD. Prices seem to range from around $5-15 a copy. For that kind of money, you’ll certainly get a lot of bang for your buck! This is easily a must-have game for the 3DO! But don’t take it from me….go check it out!
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Originally Posted by maxlords
Now I'm curious! Anyone know where or how we can find out the polygon/sprite question?
