Hands On With Maximum Games Road Rage

Remember how much fun it was to cruise around the streets and bash people with chains, bats, and billy clubs in Road Rash? Motorcycle combat games have basically disappeared, but Road Rage plans on bringing them back in a big way with a large open world, four player online, and (possibly) four player split screen. 

When you first drop into the fictional world of Road Rage you’ll find yourself wanting to explore this massive city. I cruised around the downtown area known as Subtroit bashing pedestrians with my bat before I even thought about starting a mission. The feeling that I had been missing since the days of sitting around playing Road Rash had returned. 

Once I returned from my childhood memories and came back to reality it was time to play a mission. Road Rage features checkpoint based races, circuit races, escort missions, races across the city and assassination missions where you have to attack a specific rider. I started up a checkpoint point expecting to bash and crash my way to victory! Except that didn’t happen. The AI is definitely out to get you. This isn’t a game that puts the power into your hands and the AI will just let you crack them in the back with a baseball bat. You always have to be aware of your surroundings. 

Road Rage also features tons of performance and non-performance upgrades that you can do to your bikes. Each bike has separate upgrades as well, so leveling up all of your bikes is going to take a fairly long time. I couldn’t get a solid number of characters, but was told that there will be more than 10 and less than 20. Each character has different attributes and you have to unlock them. There isn’t a character customization, but we can always hope for that in Road Rage 2. 

I was so desperate for a motorcycle combat game that I even pre-ordered and played through Ride to Hell: Retribution. If you don’t know what Ride to Hell is all about, go watch a few YouTube videos - it’s not pretty. Road Rage seems like the game that will finally deliver the experience we’ve been waiting for and will be released in the fall of 2016. 

Hands On With Compulsion Games We Happy Few

At the Microsoft press conference, I was taken back by a strange looking game called 'We Happy Few.’ Described as a 1960s dystopian urban survival game, you play as the only person who’s not high on a drug called Joy. Not taking your happy pills classifies you as a “Downer." Your goal is to escape a city that is on an island, by traveling through different biomes and areas of the city. 

The first thing you’ll notice are the visuals. There is a slight Bioshock feel, but the true inspiration for We Happy Few came from movies from the 1960s.  Compulsion Games’ art director has a very unique style that you may recognize from the PlayStation 4 launch title Contrast. 

Crafting seems to be a major part of We Happy Few. The nature of it being a roguelike survival game means that permadeath is a very real possibility. They have easier settings that will prevent this, but the truth is that this isn’t just a game that you can run through, die, hit a checkpoint, and continue on. You really need to think about your approach and take it slow. 

I only played as a one Downer, but there are three total that have interweaving stories. I definitely wish I could have had a little more hands-on with We Happy Few, but with the early access coming July 26th it won’t be long before I can jump right back into this paranoid, drugged out English city. 

The full version of We Happy Few will coming out on the Xbox One and Steam early next year.