
Regarded as one of the best games for the Sega Megadrive, Road Rash was a unique blend of arcade racing and combat. The adrenaline fueled motorbike racer not only had you racing across a great range of challenging tracks, but allowed to you do something no other racer had done before – attack other riders to try to take them out of the race! Now, Ratalaika Games has brought the classic up-to-date with their latest game, Furious Bikers for the PS4 and PS5…
Furious Bikers – An Overview
Looking at the screenshots, the first thing that springs to mind is one of Ratalaika’s more recent releases, Steel Racer. In fact, there are a lot of similarities from the offset. The game has a similar retro look, and controls are kept simple to ensure a quick pick-up-and-play style of game. As with the previous game, coins can be collected to buy new paint jobs for your bike and upgrades (although in this case it’s new bikes rather than specific upgrades). Turbo boosts can picked up along the way and there are boost pads to give you an extra surge of speed when you need it.
The only difference, as the game makes clear from the offset, is that you can attack the other riders using a combination of kicks and punches using the shoulder buttons on the controller. The four buttons are mapped to different limbs and it feels quite natural to control and it’s something that you get used to very quickly.
Game Progression
There are a total of 30 tracks on offer, with each unlocking if you manage to finish in one of the top three spots in the race before. Spread over a variety of themed areas, the tracks get tougher as you move through the stages, with a varying number of CPU opponents to beat as well. As well as the races there are a range of challenges to tackle in the game – Feats – which are basically in-game achievements. Most are fairly easy to complete, being based around finishing tracks, collecting coins and so on. There are only a couple that I would say are particularly tough (winning a race without collecting any coins, for example) but most are really a case of attrition than anything else.
The majority of these are replicated for the PlayStation Trophies so all 16 of these can be obtained within a couple of hours (it will take a bit longer to get all of the Feats), but that does limit the long term lifespan for those who are looking for a deeper challenge.
Graphics And Sound
This aspect of Furious Bikers is something of a mixed bag if I’m honest. The races themselves fly along at an incredible speed and look superb with plenty of variety in the trackside scenery. The rider has a retro pixel art aesthetic, and is well animated, with a neat wind effect for his jacket. However, the tracks themselves are all on flat ground so it does feel rather dated in terms of the track layout itself.
As for the sound, the effects themselves are nothing particularly outstanding but the music… all the pieces that play throughout are incredibly short – probably around 20 seconds or so each – and play in continous loops. Whether it’s the pieces that are on the menus, or the one that plays quietly in-game, they are all the same, and they quickly grate. The in-game music in particular – this really needs to be loud and punchy to fit the tone of the game, but it just feels subdued and barely noticeable.
Where Am I?
Now, I try not to be too harsh when it comes to reviews on the understanding that no game developer sets out to write a bad game. But there is a fundamental flaw in Furious Bikers that – truthfully – is something of a deal breaker for me and once you’ve unlocked all of the tracks and completed all the feats (Trophies) leaves nothing else in terms of replayability.
On the track selection screen, before you start a race, when you move the cursor over a track it shows you details about each track. The type of terrain, how many laps, number of other opponents and then two other key pieces of information – your best position and best time. It’s the last two that are the problem. I don’t know what happened when it came to the playtesting of this, but I found this problem after my first race…
Regardless of your position in the race, it lists your best position as something completely different (unless you have come first). On my first attempt I came third but my best position was first! I tried the next race and the same happened… and this continued for every race. The big problem is that looking at a lot of these I have no idea where I really finished and I genuinely doubt my best times as well. Equally, new tracks are unlocked for a top three finish and this is happening when you actually place lower.
I don’t know if this is a problem with the original PC version of the game, or if the bug crept through when Ratalaika did their PlayStation port (although their system usually just handles graphics, sound and trophy adaptations so it shouldnt have altered the core game code) so it’s unlikely that this would have been changed.
Playability
While Furious Bikers is a reasonably fun game to start off with, it quickly gets repetitive. Apart from the visuals, there’s little variety in the gameplay and the fact that all of the tracks are played on a flat landscape doesn’t help. With no changing weather conditions, or day/night cycle apart from the track layout every single one feels the same and that doesn’t help the longevity.
Even the combat mechanic doesn’t really seem to add anything to the game. In this respect it seems to suffer from the same issue most of the Mario Kart games do. One bump and your bike grinds to a halt or drops speed significantly while all the other riders shoot past you without any signs of a problem. In all the races I played, I only ever saw one bike crash out of the race and even then I didn’t notice if it was eliminated completely. It just left me feeling that the combat could have been left out in favour of just making this a great bike racer instead.
Overall
I’ll be honest and say that despite its reputation I was never a fan of Road Rash so I did approach this with some trepidation. To start off with I did enjoy playing Furious Bikers, but boredom quickly set in as the repetetive nature of the game revealed itself. And once I found the issue with the stats tracking that really sapped my enthusiasm for returning to it once I’d completed most of the Feats and acquired all of the Trophies. Which is a shame as there’s a potentially fun game inside screaming to get out.
It’s available for £3.99 and is Cross Buy for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
The copy of Furious Bikers used for this review was kindly provided by Ratalaika Games.
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