It seems I completely missed Road Redemption last month. Can anyone recommend it? Huge Road Rash fan here.
I looooved Road Rash 3D0 back in the day, have it hooked up to a nice CRT in my office and expect it to gather dust now thanks to Road Redemption.
The control is excellent, the music fitting and I like the rogue-like element they've added. I've been playing this steadily for the last month during breaks from Read Dead 2 and Spider-Man and only recently finished the main career mode.
They've got a good assortment of weapons and combat is exciting and fun. You can use a lead pipe to knock off someone's helmet then switch to your sword to decapitate them (giving double health/nitro boost). Slapping a C4 explosive then nitro boosting out of harm's way is always fun, as is kicking someone off a rooftop or getting the lead and dropping explosives behind you to eliminate a gang leader or take our your competition.
It's got some jank, but probably wouldn't feel like Road Rash without it. I mostly played on TV, but finally beat career mode in handheld mode on a work trip. Found both worked well but the load times are quite slow. I don't mind so much as it gave me a minute to browse my phone before being 100% glued to the screen when the racing picked up.
My tips would be to focus on upgrades that boost your experience/health gain early on. I also used the Gordon Gecko character who has less health but earns experience and cash faster (also would buy the Midas vest which lowers your armor but ups your experience/cash gain significantly), this forced me to get good, learn to time blocks, kick people more, etc. much faster.
For ranked races it's totally worthwhile to kill off your competition as you go so that you don't need to worry about rubber-banding AI late in the race. For the time trials only engage in combat when you need to refill your health/nitro otherwise just kick people out of your way. For levels where you need to eliminate gang members using C4, dynamite, and guns is very helpful. I tend not to aim side-to-side too much but to try and creep behind opponents, line up my target then blast them with the shotgun, machine gun, etc.
Haven't tried multiplayer but have had a lot of fun playing solo and found I was often compelled to have "just one more race".
