Like any medium, gaming relies heavily on word of mouth. Positive word of mouth can catapult a title to great sales, while negative word of mouth can completely kill a title in its tracks. Even though we take the warning seriously and avoid those titles from the bottom of the barrel, there is an innate curiosity begging to see if these titles are really as bad as we’ve been led to believe. This feature explores those titles to see if they really are that bad by having one of our staff sit down and play the title, or at least as much as they can to give the game a fair shake. Up this week: Ride to Hell: Retribution.
Ride to Hell: Retribution opens with the main character Jake speeding down a highway on his motorcycle. It seems a pretty typical opening for a game that features a burly biker as its main character. Suddenly though the scene changes and Jake is on a turret and I am haphazardly shooting enemies as they leave a fort of some kind. After I kill about 100 enemies, this sequence ends just as abruptly as it begins cutting to Jake jumping over a helicopter with his bike and then to the title card bearing Ride to Hell: Retribution hits the screen. This is finally followed by a loading page as the actual game prepares to start.
I should have shut it off right there. I should have ejected the disc from my 360 and sent it packing right on back to Gamefly because Ride to Hell: Retribution does really suck and one only needs to play the intro sequence to see that. I didn’t send it back though, instead I jumped headfirst into the rabbit hole and, Oh God, what unsightly sites I’ve seen.
Jake is a Vietnam vet, fresh back from the war. He has an uncle and a brother. His brother is into older girls and bands and wants Jake to take him to see a hot new band at some local club. However there are dark things in the night and his uncle doesn’t want them out after sunset. This causes a hissy fit from the younger brother and he runs off by himself. Jake chases after him but before that can happen, loading screen.
Initially chasing after Jake’s quarry seems like it will be a cake walk as it really is just Jake chasing him down on his bike but then things get weird. On this seemingly normal highway cars and trucks are strategically placed for you to avoid them, ramps are set up in the middle of the road and construction equipment is oddly set up so players can get maximum air on their jumps. Why is all this stuff there? Who cares, it is a video game and the gameplay does not need to service the story or vice versa.
Jake’s bike handles like he has coated his tires in bacon grease. There is no sense of traction and I slipped and slid all over the road as I chased after his little brother. Hitting obstacles would reset Jake and if I hit too many of them the sequence would fail and I’d have to suffer another loading screen to redo the sequence. Fortunately the sequences are all relatively short and when they aren’t they smartly have decent check points. Unfortunately all the sequences are relatively boring and poorly put together. Anyway, once I hit a rather arbitrary stopping point, I was rewarded with another loading screen leading into another cutscene. 20 minutes in and I’ve only played one very poorly designed motorcycle obstacle course posing as a chase sequence. And I still have no idea what the hell is going on.
The game is loaded with cutscenes and loading screens, overwhelming every other aspect of the title. There is no excuse for the loading screens, the game is just poorly optimized. The cutscenes on the other hand wouldn’t be so awful if at least they told a story worth caring about.
30 minutes in, Jake’s brother is dead and we finally understand our mission, revenge, except I don’t care about Jake, let alone his brother. After the not-so emotional death of Jake’s brother at the hands of a rival bike gang, Jake sets out on his bike for more vengeance. This opens up a couple different gameplay avenues though aside from the pretty random motorcycle obstacle course chase sequence. There is motorcycle combat, which plays out like a Road Rash but is about as much fun as pressing the A button over and over again until the other guy falls off his bike. There is hand to hand brawling, which mostly consists of just pressing the X button over and over again. And there is gun combat, which plays like one is trying to use a cat that is getting water sprayed at it. All of these sequences are bookended by cutscenes and loading screens.
The loading times and horrible gameplay is enough to declare Ride to Hell: Retribution a shitty game. But what makes it truly despicable is in how it handles every female character in the game, transforming Jake into a rather unlikeable character.
The first female character that I met in the game propositioned Jake for sex. He turns her down stating business before pleasure but then in the very next instance of gameplay beats up a random guy beating on his girlfriend in a parking lot and then fucks her. No context for why this happens, I can only assume that he felt he took care of some business and was now due some pleasure. A short time after this Jake meets a lady mechanic whose husband, a deadbeat by her account, has the key to the brewery that Jake needs to access. Jake and the mechanic then go to her house where he beats the hell out of this lady’s husband and his pals and then… fucks her for good measure.
It’s one thing to write a womanizing sex-crazed character if it fits within the context of the character and the story. Jake is on a mission of revenge though and yet he seems to have the time to screw anything that moves, provided he doesn’t have to pay for it. An hour into Ride to Hell: Retribution and the only thing I got from it was in this weird world of motorcycle obstacle courses, women are only good for one thing – sex. Maybe at some point in the game it shows a strong female that doesn’t spread her legs for Jake just for the heck of it, but I doubt it and I quit having no interest in finding out.
The game is gross. The fact that it came out this year, a year in which games with strong storytelling and strong female characters were pretty prevalent, is even more baffling. How did something like this get greenlit? Who thought this was a good idea? There is no way around it, Ride to Hell: Retribution sucks and I’m regretful that I spent as long on it as I did. This is a game that belongs in a landfill not your console or PC. Avoid it at all costs.
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