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Friday 8 February, 2008
Gameplay 2
The second time playing this game is pretty much the same as the first. It can get a little monotonous because you basically do the same thing over and over. Neither the concept or the gameplay are very deep, which is good in some ways, but bad in others. It’s good because it makes the game easy to pick up for half an hour and then put back down. However, this also works against itself, because it’s really easy to exhaust interest in this game.
One thing the game is good at is relieving stress. I went and played the ‘Ped Hunt’ (ped= pedestrian) after taking my Calculus midterm, and it actually helped me chill out.
Design
I think for its time, Road Rash had a few innovations. The most fun is definitely the weapon system. Aside from the varied choices, and being able to hit other racers while racing, the player can steal a weapon from another or collect one that may be on the racetrack.
Being able to attack other racers brings me to one of my favorite parts of the game: the Rap Sheet. After every race, there is a screen that displays how many times you attacked other racers, how many crashes caused, weapons stolen, pedestrians hit, and police officers assaulted. This is more fun than winning money in the story mode, and is definitely a great reward system. The other part of the reward system that I like is that if the player comes in last in a story mode race, he still gets a prize, but it’s really lame, like a moist towellete, a cheese plate or a pet rock. Overall, the tone was consistent, due to things like the rap sheet, the crappy last place prizes, the music and character names.
The controls are a different story. Maybe it’s just me, but the turning was really hard to get the hang of. Also, if the player crashes into anything- signpost, cow, building- he automatically wipes out. Buildings I understand, but cows? Unfortunately, the levels I played (I don’t know about the later ones) were not differentiated very much from each other. Of course, there are limits to the graphic capabilities of the time, but each level tended to feel similar, except with a few twists thrown in.
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