Rage Racer is definitely an apt word for this game. There’s something appropriate about calling it Rage Racer when you feel as though Namco, a company who can make very good games, should be doing a bit more for their patrons than what they give us here. When they first graced the Playstation with Ridge Racer, people were cheering at how amazing the feat was to bring an arcade game to a home console. They were enraptured by how incredible it was to see proper 3D in the home, staring out at you, the player. You were there looking at THESE graphics and thinking, “wow, these are something else.”
And just over a year or so later, they gave us Rage Racer.
And suddenly… we knew what we could have and Namco didn’t give it to us. And it was disappointing.
And RAGE is indeed appropriate.
Consider if you will the fact that Ridge Racer was more of a tech demo released as a game than an actual, fully-realised title. It was the arcade experience at home and that experience was a short one whereby you play the game for your coin and then once you’ve had your turn, you give the next person a go. Essentially, it’s a five-minute romp around a colourful-looking landscape that is kinda like having sex in a field.
Yes, I went there.
There really isn’t much more to that game in that you have three tracks (I mean… just barely three tracks if we’re being super fair) and you don’t really have anything other than the pick-up-and-play experience. Thus, I don’t so much as call it a game but a tech demo. People spent money on a game that could last you all of about five minutes.
I can’t insert any more sex jokes here. Although you can almost count that last sentence as one.
Shush. You made it dirtier.
Rage Racer is eighteen months older.
It has four tracks.
And how do they pad this out? By saying you can race on them backwards.
HOLY SHIT, THOSE AREN’T EXTRA TRACKS, THAT’S LIKE SAYING YOU CAN MAKE YOUR HOMEWORK LAST LONGER BY SAYING YOU CAN ALSO WRITE IT WITH YOUR NON-DOMINANT HAND.
RAGE.
Now, being fair to it, regardless of how many tracks there are…n’t… cos there aren’t any, the core gameplay has been fine-tuned to a point where Rager Racer succeeds in doing what it ought to do: be a fun racing game.
And let’s be honest, Rage Racer is a very fun, fine enough racing game. It’s just one that happens to have many, many flaws that tarnish the experience somewhat. Because as much fun as I had with the game, I didn’t have enough fun with it to make me want to continue playing it for as long as perhaps I could have.
But perhaps that’s alright when there’s not much actual game to play. It means that when I stop having fun, I actually don’t have any more game to see. I dunno. Look, I’m pissed that they thought four tracks PLUS MIRROR TRACKS was acceptable by this point. And considering the lower sales figures, I think the fans thought the same thing.
You will notice the biggest difference between this and the first Ridge Racer game is that the graphics have been overhauled somewhat. Gone are the stylish and colourful backgrounds with that happy atmosphere. The jolly, smiley look to the game has been replaced by realistic-looking textures and colours that make the whole game look… drab. The barest amount of colour comes from glimpses of the city, the occasional tunnel here and there, the cars themselves aren’t as vibrant as they could be but they do at the very least stand out. However, it isn’t too hard to stand out in the graphical department.
Everything just looks so grey and lifeless. And there’s a FUCKING WATERFALL in the game. How did they manage to make even THAT look lifeless?
Granted, real water effects would have made that waterfall look stunning AF, I know. And this in an era of graphical prowess that wasn’t quite capable of doing that. But it’s disappointing to think that a waterfall is made to look as boring as the rest of the graphics because the colour-pallette is so stripped back and beige that it makes my mum’s taste in interior decorating look exciting, and I’m sorry mum, but you know you make everything in your house look beige so I can say that with confidence AND YOU KNOW IT.
WE MADE A JOKE ABOUT IT.
SHE MADE MUFFINS AND WE CALLED THEM BEIGE CAKES. IT STUCK WITH US FOR FOURTEEN YEARS.
THIS GAME IS THE EQUIVALENT OF BEIGE CAKES.
The menu system even manages to look quite lifeless. It goes for this stylised, graphic-design look that is part Tron, part wireframe-everything. AND YET THEY STILL COLOUR THE FUCKING THING GREY. If you want to make the audience sit up and take notice, by all means, use the design you have, but do at least make it pop. Don’t mute everything so that it fades into the background. It should excite the player, not make them think everything is going to be bland and dingy-looking.
Because that’s what you did with everything else.
At least the music’s still good. Let’s at least give it that. And that isn’t really giving that enough credit to be fair to it. The soundtrack is a really cool mix of 90s rave/techno and thrashing guitars. It’s an odd mix which almost shouldn’t work – and probably shouldn’t fit this game – but it works because it feels frenetic enough to fit alongside the racing action. Had there been more game to enjoy, there might have been more soundtrack to enjoy as well.
Aside from the lacklustre look of the game, Rage Racer has managed to do a fair few things right. The main crux of the game HAS been overhauled to a much more inviting home console experience. It is less of an arcade racer and more of a driving game this time. You can still perform drift turns and whatnot but the intent here is to increase the longevity of the game to more than a pick-up-and-play type of game.
Think back to Road Rash on the Mega Drive. To really move forward in that game, you had to earn money to buy new motorbikes. In this case, Rage Racer has taken a few leads from it and introduce a credit system. As you win races (because you don’t earn squat from coming second or third, let’s be honest here), you will earn credits that can be used to improve the performance of your current vehicle and eventually be used to purchase new ones, which will allow you to progress further.
You can also tinker with the set up of the cars this time around to suit your personal racing style. If you want to go for speed, you can sacrifice the handling and vice versa. There’s a lot more thought gone into how you play this time. Instead, you were drifting around tracks blindly having a bit of harmless fun, arcading your way around the place.
This time, you have to try and adapt everything to what fits you. You don’t have to, of course. You can just stick to the main car you’re given that’s average as fuck, but it won’t really help you in the grand scheme of things. Some older fans might not like this as much, but then again, people who are fans of Ridge Racer might onto have the concentration span of a bar of soap – I AM KIDDING. It’s a joke about short the game is LOL, don’t @ me.
Plus you know it’s true.
LOL.
The thing is… Rage Racer is a heck of a lot of fun to play. It’s actually a very good racing game that straddles the line between arcade and simulation rather impressively. The tracks you HAVE are good fun to play on. They’re easy to race around and just as much fun to try and master the cornering and layouts. The actual race set-up isn’t as good as it could have been. It has that old school feel of having all of the other cars strung out along the track, which means the ones in first, second and third started LONG before you did and you will really only get close to them on laps two – at a push – and three.
So why do they get the preferential treatment here? Why do I never start at the front of the grid? What do I have to do to get to the front of the grid? I’m always at the back? DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MANY RACES I’VE WON FOR YOU TO PUT ME LAST ON THE GRID? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE WHO END UP BEHIND ME IN EVERY RACE AND YET SET OFF BEFORE ME?! DID YOU TELL ME A DIFFERENT TIME TO START MY RACE?! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK GUYS!!!
Seriously though… what is that? Why AM I last? Why do I never get to be first? It all seems a bit unfair and forced. It’s not fucking kiss chase or hide and seek!
Angry Racer does somewhat live up to its moniker in that the robotic, glacial-sounding announcer keeps telling you to ‘teach this sucker a lesson’ or ‘you can pass that chump’ as you near opponents. She also tells you off for finishing a lap at a slightly slower pace than your previous one. Basically, she’s calling you out and everyone else out and in other circumstances, I might call the announcer an almighty bitch.
And I just might.
See, I have this thing that when I’m teaching children, I don’t make them feel bad by telling them they suck for doing something wrong providing they try their best. If I know someone can do better because they’re being lazy, yeah, I’ll call them out and get them to think about their attitude and behaviour. Somehow, I don’t think they’d be too pleased to hear an announcer in a game telling them they suck because they tried to pass someone and they got in the way. These kinds of tactics don’t always work on adults either/ I mean, they induce rage in adults just as much.
Hence the name.
But seriously, there are two extremes in the announcements. It’s either ‘OH WOW YOU SMASHED THE RECORD, YOU’RE AMAZING!” or “WOW, YOU SUCK, ARE YOU DRIVING A SNAIL OR SOMETHING?”
So it definitely the motif, I’ll grant you that. But… it might put some people off.
On the whole, Rage Racer does the driving part well and that’s pretty much what saves this from being a ‘Let’s NOT Talk About’ category of review. It is graphically impressive, save for the world’s dullest colour palette, and the music is brilliant. There’s plenty of enjoyment to be had here!
There’s just… not enough game here. Having the Grand Prix option that realistically only covers three main tracks PLUS AN OVAL really isn’t enough for the third game in a series. You find yourself having to repeat tracks over and over again to earn new credits to buy better cars to move up classes… and playing the same old tracks can get very repetitive.
If there was more game, it’d be better because as it is, Rage Racer induces rage for just not being enough. It is the epitome of a 7/10 game but not for the right reasons. Double the number of actual tracks and it would have easily been 8 or 9.
Instead, we’ll just have to contend with the same scathing commentary and greyscale waterfall for about twenty races without wanting to punch someone. And when you’re told you suck every lap, that’s not going to be easy.
And for the record, you don’t suck, children. Not much anyway.
Blimey, boyo 