In a genre that occupies a nigh-nonexistent share in the gaming landscape, Redout was a gem that breathed fresh life into the nearly forgotten realm of AG racing. Released in September of 2016, the game would receive critical acclaim and become a cult classic to many, forging a small but dedicated community of racers that remain active to this day. Amidst the next four years, 34BigThings would release a handful of DLC tracks and continue publishing an odd game here and there, until eventually releasing Redout: Space Assault in January of 2021 for PC and all major consoles. Space Assault deviated heavily from the original title, having swapped to being an arcade on-rails shooter set almost 2 centuries before the events of Redout. The game flopped in a disappointingly unspectacular fashion, with players expecting more than oversimplified mechanics in the vein of Star Fox and the game breaking bugs that would plague the game.
However, this release would be a palate cleanse for what was on the horizon. Come the end of the year, 34BigThings would announce an official sequel for the Redout franchise to be published by Saber Interactive (more on these guys later) sometime in 2022. While the video never exploded in popularity, the announcement would garner significant excitement within the community, and as the game approached its release date, it would even sap some of the attention from journalists outside the AG space. Upon release, Redout II was praised for the polish of its mechanics combined with improved customization and tutorialization, though it suffered heavily from a slew of bugs and difficulty issues, causing opinions on the game to tank. The game had since undergone a slew of updates, adding two locales as well as numerous bug fixes and quality of life updates, eventually raising the Steam review aggregate to a strong ‘Very Positive” score of 80%. While the game sports a fantastic primary gameplay loop and several quality of life improvements, there are equally as many frustrating design decisions that make Redout II more of a sidestep compared to its predecessor, holding the game back from sitting amongst the best AG racers on the market.
(With the game having remained relatively unchanged for nearly the past year, the game will mostly be critiqued in its current state, although previous iterations will be mentioned when they are relevant.)
Presentation
Redout II takes place in the same post-apocalypse as its previous iteration, and therefore utilizes the same premise: in the distant future, humans have made a successful exodus from Earth, taking to the stars and living on other planets following the success of terraforming operations. Nowadays, these numerous planets, including Earth, are now also being used to host the most popular competitive sport in the universe, the Solar Redout Racing League (SRRL). The best racers from around the world compete to be the fastest in a series of daring circuits and death-defying races that would put Hot Wheels to shame. Of course, you are a fresh new pilot that just got inducted into the SRRL and must work your way up the classes to become the next champion. Redout II is unfortunately lighter with its story than what was previously provided, only providing brief snippets of background as you play. They are primarily exposed through loading screen exposition or one-time cutscenes that play after purchasing a new ship. This is a stark contrast to the massive walls of text that, while only prevalent in the darker corners of the game, still existed to provide considerable depth to the world you were racing in. While it is certainly better than providing no additional context, the lore isn’t quite as full as the game’s predecessor.
Thankfully, there are plenty of subtle touches of storytelling throughout the locales that you play on, and the breadth of personality added to these locations make them all the more captivating. The unforgiving red climate of the Tartarus Mines is made readily apparent through its blazing temperatures and spewing hot lava, but the massive statues commemorating the large-scale loss of life associated with living here shows the ruthless resolve of its denizens. The sparks of humanity and its determination remain, no matter how long or grueling times may be, and this carries over into how these tracks play out. With a longer track length, high temperature, and risky jumps made over never-ending pits of lava, surviving laps on Tartarus are daunting challenges of endurance, but it makes reaching the finish line in a cooler section of the planet all the more rewarding. This is a stark contrast to the bright, yet claustrophobic life of the urban Neo Tokyo, where you are constantly twisting and bending through tight hairpins and narrow tracks, and straightaways are a far less common occurrence. Describing the climate of your environment through track design has always been a strong point of the first game, and it is just as prevalent here.
Surrounding the visuals themselves, the low-poly graphical style of the first game has been removed in favor of a more realistic appearance closer to that of WipEout HD or 2048. While the game is undeniably pretty to look at, even on a standard PS4, it does lose some of what made it unique. The first game’s style was an ingenious mesh of synergizing its staggering speed with the “blurriness” of the low-poly style, making a unique effect where the environment seemed to fade as you cranked up the speed. Whilst undoubtedly a subjective nitpick, it becomes more apparent when mentioning the performance of the game. While the PS5 version runs at 60 frames per second without many problems, the PS4 is unfortunately locked to 30, which is a stark contrast to the 60 frames per second that the predecessor was able to comfortably sustain with inferior hardware.
Redout II offers a more grounded, industrial approach to its sound design, opting for a heavier contrast to the previous whooshes and taps of the original. While there are no longer sounds of wind blowing against your craft to sell you the sense of speed, there are other means of immersing you into the world of post-apocalyptic AG racing. The high whirring sound made when traversing the track does a better job implying the use of magnets rather than the hovercrafts/quadcopters of the previous game. Unlike the lightweight feel of the previous game, each movement sounds heavy and deliberate, as if one false move is all it takes for things to hit the fan. When your ship can’t take any more heat, a fire violently erupts in the ship and it falls apart almost instantly. Using your boost emits a kettle noise of continuously rising pitch, implying that whatever’s being used is heating up, and fast. When you activate your turbo boost, your craft’s engine roars to life, attempting to sustain itself as long as possible while you continuously push it to its limits. It’s a brilliant way to recreate the feeling of slamming your car’s acceleration on the highway, just to see how fast you can push either before you explode or back down out of fear. It’s a visceral thrill every time.
The dynamic soundtrack makes a return from its previous installment, substituting the talent of previous composer Aram Shahbazians for a handful of other talent within electronic music, including Zardonic, Dance With The Dead, and Giorgio Moroder. If you’ve listened to any of these artists, you may notice some of their previous work has been utilized in this game, with Zardonic’s Takeover being a particular highlight. On their own, these tracks are a fitting background for the high-octane racing, and are a treat for fans of the artists. While the dynamic nature is significantly more noticeable in some departments, it falls to the wayside or is completely drowned out by gameplay in others. Even with both at equal volume, it is difficult to hear any of the music over the roaring sounds of boosts and engines roaring. Additionally, any mixing that is done during a race simply isn’t that noticeable in comparison to the dramatic shifts in tone that Redout I’s mixing would provide during a race.
TAKEOVER – OST
Core Gameplay
In communicating how Redout II’s sound design reflects a greater emphasis on magnets than quadcopters, it also reflects the shift in the gameplay. The core control foundation has not changed from the previous iteration. You are still able to accelerate, steer, and strafe your craft from left to right as you could in Redout. However, there have been a handful of alterations made to align more closely to that of WipEout and a certain playstyle common in its predecessor.
The most immediately noticeable change comes from the level of grip that your ships have on the track. Even when playing ships with a lower level of grip, they still operate more closely to AG racers such as WipEout and BallisticNG. Sliding has been significantly reduced and turning doesn’t reduce your speed nearly as much. While still not as grippy as most contemporary arcade racers, there is enough present for pilots to feel more in control as they negotiate corners, but not enough to dispel the unease of controlling such unstable craft. For those familiar with the previous Redout, the playstyle that would best describe the feel of Redout II would be if you were to don a ship with the Turbo Boost and Magnetic Stabilizer powerups.
The other noticeable change comes from a fundamental shift in how boosting operates, requiring players to weigh their decisions more carefully in a split second before speeding up. Instead of depleting an energy meter that builds while accelerating, boosting in Redout II is centered around an overheat mechanic. The more you boost, the higher the heat meter rises, which is fairly standard in accordance with other iterations of the mechanic. However, where things get interesting is what happens once you exceed the limits of your ship’s coolant mechanism. Once you go past what your ship is reasonably capable of dissipating, any boosting begins sapping your health, acting as a second heat meter that can boost you even further. That is, if you have the courage to push that far.
With these changes in mind, it is readily apparent that the overall racing style of Redout II appears vastly different from the quadcopter physics of its predecessor. However, even with the drastic changes in the handling of the crafts, the racing itself doesn’t stray away from the constant knife-edge between success and death, a style of gameplay that prominently sold its predecessor. Rather, it keeps things fresh by putting a fresh spin on what being on the edge of control can entail. Instead of providing just enough control to keep alive by the skin of your teeth, Redout II gives you all the control in the world and encourages you to push towards the edge of what your ship can handle to gain the greatest possible advantage. You’re still constantly on edge throughout the race, only the circumstances have changed; pushing your craft close to the edge to zip past the straightaways and then being left to negotiate corners with only a sliver of health remaining. Any crash will either kill you or delay the automated health regeneration, either of which will put you on the backfoot. This formula is equally as exhilarating to play as the original, especially when you’re fighting tooth and nail for first place and desperately trying to keep your craft in one piece.
GAMEPLAY DEMO
Is Redout 2 an Improvement?
The general role of a sequel is to provide more of what made the original product beloved, resolving issues that may have arisen, and iterating on what worked to meaningfully innovate and keep things from becoming stagnant. If Redout II’s effectiveness as a sequel were measured strictly on this definition of a sequel, then it ultimately succeeds. The core gameplay loop, whilst a significant alteration from its previous iteration, retains its core identity of high-speed/high-risk racing. Additionally, onboarding and customization have seen a vast improvement, offering a greater depth of tools to not only educate newer players, but to also give them the flexibility to go the distance.
The tutorial in the original Redout was virtually nonexistent. Upon booting up the game, you were given a one-time presentation of the barebones tutorial, showing you nothing more than the base control scheme and leaving players to figure things out on their own. While learning game mechanics independently can be a rewarding venture, the unintuitive mechanics coupled with the sheer hostility of the initial skill floor would have certainly put many players off the game. The sequel does a complete 180 by offering the Redout Academy, a selection of tutorial races designed as a zero-pressure environment for beginners. These events escalate from teaching basic controls and maneuvers to valuable winning strategies that will apply practically everywhere. While there are still mechanics for players to figure out on their own, there’s enough introduced here to make learning what’s left out significantly less daunting.
The tutorial was not the only push for accessibility, as there are other well-implemented features that greatly assist in the learning process. For example, if you accidentally botch a turn or miss a jump, you have the ability to rewind time to any point you please within a certain time frame. In essence, this allows players to ‘undo’ their last move and place them in a comfortable position to try the portion again. When rewinding to any certain place, the player’s speed and trajectory are all intact from that point in time, so when you end up making the turn/jump, it’s as if you had done it on the first try. This makes learning maps a breeze, since you are free to repeatedly attempt any portion of the track in a practical setting without losing significant time. Additionally, there are additional assists that help players control their craft if they are not fully comfortable doing everything on their own yet. The most apt comparison would be that of Pilot Assist from modern WipEout games, albeit with a far greater depth of customization. You are able to have the game correct control of your craft in ways that you specifically may be struggling with. Constantly blowing up your ship from boosting too much? You can set an assist that stops you at any given health percentage. Struggling to keep your ship straight during flight? There are assists ready to aid you. This customizability allows players to continuously grow out of the training wheels and race entirely on their own, especially since certain options may hinder how fast the player can truly go.
Customization has seen significant change as well, and while it can be annoying to fiddle with when coupled with issues that will be discussed later on, the range that you are able to tweak your ride offers more variety in what’s viable than what Redout I had to offer. In the previous iteration, all you had to customize your ship’s potential were two power ups that you could equip: one which you proactively used throughout the race, and one that passively upgraded certain aspects of your ship. In Redout II, you are now able to customize which modules you can equip on your ship, each of which affects your ship’s stats in different ways. Some propulsors pride themselves on the raw speed boost they provide, while others may offer significant acceleration capabilities, or something in between. Perhaps you’d like to have your craft handle so well it makes WipEout’s AG Systems look like Quirex, or maybe you want to make a tank that can break the sound barrier without any fuss. Alternatively, you can also adjust your specifications to accommodate the driving style of pod racing: dangerously slippery glass cannons that require fierce control and delicate handling to survive. All of these options are possible within the confines of Redout II’s customization capabilities, and it allows for significantly more player expression than what the previous game offered. While it is true that some builds are more powerful than others, the majority of the differences found between them lie amongst players in higher skill levels, where build quality is just as important a metric to improve as mechanical skill.
While Redout II has introduced numerous quality of life changes that make it a more enjoyable experience to that of the original in the eyes of many players, it would be more accurate to call the sequel a sidestep or a sheepish inch ahead of the original rather than the confident step forward that the genre needs. By aggressively pursuing a means of justifying the initial $40 price tag (the base price has since been dropped to $20), Redout II adopts tendencies that many studios fall into when adding content into games of such scale.
Tracks and Designs
The career mode of Redout II easily dwarfs what was available in the first game. For reference, when accounting for all 7 locales added as DLC, Redout I contained roughly 198 events. The sequel contains 375 events, DLC outstanding. Once you add in the 2 current DLC locales, you have a total of 480 events to complete. When put in a vacuum, this is a vast pool of content, over doubling what the initial game had to offer in its entirety. According to estimates provided by the author and other sources, achieving 100% completion (including achievements and full career completion) is estimated to take around 100-120 hours, whereas Redout I could be accomplished in roughly 40-50 hours. Surely a higher content volume serves to benefit the game’s longevity, right? This is where things get interesting…
In total, the first Redout contained 12 locales, with each containing 5 unique tracks to play on, offering a whopping 60 tracks to play. Additionally, the game offered 11 game modes, and while they were not all completely unique, there was enough variety to encourage differing approaches with each one. The high number of unique tracks and play modes puts the high event count into better perspective, showcasing how much the game has available. Redout II, on the other hand, boasts 9 locales, each with 3 unique tracks, and only 6 game modes. While there are only 27 tracks available in the game, each of them can also be played in reverse, allowing for a total of 54 tracks. While there are fewer tracks in the game, they are considerably longer than the original. For reference, most tracks in Redout I averaged a lap time of around 30-60 seconds, whereas tracks in the sequel averaged around 60-90 seconds, with some lasting upwards of 2 minutes or greater. Additionally, environment conditions now play a greater role in how it affects the race, including variables such as temperature, gravity, and atmosphere. While they do make each locale more mechanically diverse, some of their effects become increasingly negligible the longer you play, since nothing requires a dramatic shift in playstyle. The game mode count has also been reduced to 6, with 4 different flavors of races, a time attack, and a score attack centered around going consistently fast.
On their own, these numbers are far from bare, offering a healthy variety of tracks and at least a few game modes to keep players on their toes over the course of a career similar in length to that of a WipEout game or maybe even the original Redout. However, with the monstrous size of the sequel’s career mode coupled with the sheer redundancy of its events, the numbers appear smaller and smaller as you progress through it. While the track count is meaty enough when looking at the numbers, a good portion of each one consists of parts that carry over across all the tracks in the locale, with each layout differentiated by a slight alteration in where you are turning, showing routes to other tracks while you’re racing. It is certainly a more realistic approach to connecting tracks together, and it does offer greater immersion, though it is not worth the samey nature of recycling portions across every track in the locale, especially when having to race on both the regular and reversed layouts.
On top of repeating segments near the beginning or end on every track, it also significantly limits the capabilities of attaching any kind of personality to the tracks. Take Volcano in Redout I, for instance. While it is the same location, the tracks benefitted from featuring different areas of the locale, from the calmer/cooler exterior of Fingertips to the hot magma of Deep Dive or Magmatic Chamber, or even the largest jump in the entire league with the Hell track. The differences between tracks were visual as well as mechanical, serving to make each one stick out in a player’s head in an enjoyable fashion. In Redout II, when coupled with the reversed variants prevalent as well, tracks in a locale feel more like different sequences of turns and jumps rather than unique challenges set in the same environment. It’s recycling upon recycling for the sake of inflating numbers.
Career Structure
The repetition is forced into even greater clarity when putting more similar track design against the overall structure of the career mode. Each event has four stars that can be earned, three of which are obtained by placing 1st or beating the gold medal threshold, and the fourth by completing a miscellaneous objective. This objective can be anything from winning with a 5 second lead, flying 2 KM in a single jump, being at 1500 KM/H or higher upon reaching the finish line, and more. Earning enough stars for an event will unlock either a ship module or an aesthetic item, though most ship modules only require 3 of the 4 stars, only requiring 1st place or a 2nd place clear with the bonus objective to earn. Some of these events or bonus objectives are nearly to virtually impossible on the first go around since they expect you to have stronger ship modules that you don’t own yet, encouraging you to go back to these events once you have acquired the proper modules to tackle them. Incorporating a bonus objective into every event that each may take additional tries turns a big campaign into a commitment equivalent to reading the entire Bible twice over.
The numbers get even more ridiculous when delving into the DLC. Each DLC gets its own respective season, offering over 50 events across 3 tracks in a locale. Playing this many events on the same tracks would certainly be on the repetitive side, so over half the events take place on tracks you’ve already raced on. Many of these familiar events tread the exact same ground that the original seasons went through; the same tracks, the same game modes, and in some cases, the same power scale, only with a different name and more cosmetic rewards to unlock. In other words, half of the DLC you paid for consists of recycled content that you can experience elsewhere in the game’s career mode. It’s particularly frustrating because Redout didn’t adopt this model at first. DLC packs in the original had far fewer events placed across its career and were half the price of the sequel’s DLC, yet each purchase often came with 2 locales, each with 5 unique tracks to play on. While there was significantly less content in the objective sense, these DLC packs gave you greater value for your money than what the sequel provides.
Difficulty / Rewards
The sheer length of the career mode would be fine if it served to build towards a difficult finale, or if there was a reward for plowing through it all. In most other games, lengthy career modes were often implemented to give players ample time to improve their skills, since it would prepare them for the difficult trials that awaited them towards the end. To an extent, Redout II does adopt this idea, offering tough challenges toward the latter end of the campaign, platinum time/score thresholds for each event that were above the gold medal, and multiple difficulty settings that could test a pilot’s skills if they were inclined to do so. The game does reward you for your efforts in some capacity through unlocking upgrade modules and aesthetic options by earning enough stars in the event. However, when it comes to unlocking upgrade modules, all you ordinarily need is around 2-3, negating the need to do everything. Obtaining all the stars on an event nets you a cosmetic reward in the form of a single alteration to the many parts of your ship. While it is a solid reward loop in concept, it’s let down by how underwhelming the cosmetic rewards are on their own. Each cosmetic offered was tiny and practically unnoticeable, a reward that may pale in comparison to the effort that was required to earn it, like how the tips of your craft look. It looks slightly different, but was it worth the many attempts it may have taken to earn it? Even for those obsessed with customization, the ratio between effort and reward is simply too skewed here, and there is no practical reason to do everything unless you are hunting for the platinum trophy.
While there are options to push your skills even further, it is all entirely pointless. Outside the nebulous cosmetic rewards awaiting you at the end of every event, unless you are dedicated to improving at this game, there is no reason not to bump the difficulty down to its easiest setting and breeze through everything. You are given zero reward or recognition for going the extra mile on anything or improving yourself beyond the bare minimum. Doing anything on the hardest/easiest difficulty yields no functional difference whatsoever. Platinum medals are no longer tallied nor visibly measured for the player, meaning they have no gauge of how many they’ve earned or which ones they’ve done unless they do so independently. Even if you were to make an effort out of the desire for personal accomplishment, the game’s structure actively demotivates you from doing so. While you could crank the difficulty up to its hardest setting or go for every platinum medal where it is available, why would you choose to repeatedly retry events on tracks you’ve already burnt yourself out on for an arbitrary reason in a career that is already this grand in size? If you struggle to earn those clears to begin with, doing so over an entire career mode is an exhausting effort that leaves players with nothing in return compared to those who took the easy way out. Conversely, if you turn down the difficulty and beat everything with relative ease, it becomes a stream of noise. There is no sweet spot in difficulty to be found here.
Doing everything in the career is already a monumental task, but it is made even more so when including more than several instances of bonus objectives that are not as difficult as they are obnoxious to complete, especially if you are doing it on a harder difficulty. For example, a Boss event is a race where one lap requires you to traverse across all three circuits in the given locale. As such, each lap is considerably longer, averaging at around 4-5 minutes each. Later boss events push the lap count of these races to 2 or sometimes even 3, making these events alone each take up to 15 minutes, and that’s assuming the player wins on the first go around. Some of these longer events contain bonus objectives necessitating players to complete them in their entirety without dying once. Doing this on lower difficulties is a breeze, since players can take things as slow as they need, and if things go south they have a rewind feature to back them up. However, if you are playing on harder difficulties, you are given no such luxuries. These events are long, arduous tests of endurance on their own, and stacking a no-death challenge on top of it makes these events aggravating to complete if you weren’t compelled to do it in the first place without having heard of it.
There are also certain bonus objectives on certain tracks whose stipulations demand strategies that severely (and nearly comically) contrast from what is usually required of players. Certain objectives have required players to jump a certain distance using unintended strategies, make as many perfect landings as physically possible within a certain time frame, beating the gold medal time by a significant lead on a track without much room for improvement, and more. It’s one thing to have an event that requires tremendous skills from your players to complete, but it’s not nearly as acceptable when the difficulty is an arbitrarily constructed wall that was likely not playtested. When the game launched, there were numerous bonus objectives and even a few odd platinum times that were borderline impossible to pull off and had to be pointed out by community members before they were fixed.
This isn’t even keeping in mind the bonus objectives that necessitate good qualifying times as well. In practically every race in the harder leagues, you are required to complete a time trial of the track you are about to race on, with your time determining your placement on the starting grid. Many of these events’ bonus objectives require you to have the best qualifying time before starting the race. While not a bad idea on its own, the effects of your starting position is mostly pointless in the greater context of the race, since you are most likely going to pass the other racers anyway, regardless of where you start. Even if it did matter, these objectives do little more than practically add another unofficial event on top of the event you are already doing, made worse by the fact that these time trials are significantly more difficult than the actual events or even most other time trials. Having difficult time trials isn’t the problem here, nor is the existence of challenging qualifiers. It’s when you are constantly required to perform well to earn one star out of thousands that the mechanic quickly becomes tiresome.
Granted, pushing the difficulty up or going for 100% is entirely optional. You don’t have to complete every event, earn every star, earn every platinum medal, or do things on the hardest difficulty if it isn’t fun. It’s great that these options exist for players who want to challenge their abilities, and their self-motivation is usually enough to give them the push. That being said, what purpose does optional content serve in a game if there is no enjoyment to be found in doing it all? Self-motivation alone will only take people so far before they begin questioning their efforts, especially when there are few, if any returns. While the massive career does give players more Redout and at minimum an illusion of progression, the repetition of content that the game expects you to complete for 100% becomes increasingly grating. Once you are eventually exhausted from playing the same events on the same tracks, you come to realize how much filler was placed into the career mode all just to boost playtime and justify the same price tag that you paid for your predecessor.
Even if you were to put 100% completion aside, that doesn’t make the career mode any more enjoyable simply because of how long it is, especially in comparison to other games in the genre. For reference, WipEout: Omega Collection consists of three entire careers from two separate games and a meaty DLC, and even then, completing 100% of the trophies is generally estimated to take around 40 hours, less than half of what one game required of its players. Just getting to the end of the Redout II’s career is a grind, completing it 100% is a slog, and with the sheer scale, there is no pacing to be found whatsoever.
The first 20 hours boils down to the exact same events on the exact same tracks in the exact same environments, with almost the exact same stipulations necessary to complete them. While this length can serve to give players ample time to practice the tracks, the same results could have been achieved by encouraging players to revisit prior events for better placements/missed bonus objectives. Either option could have theoretically worked, but Redout II is attempting to have its cake and eat it too by incorporating both, offering a huge volume of events with some having bonus objectives or times that are virtually impossible for players on their first go around with their current equipment and skillset. All it ends up doing is adding more bloat to events that players will inevitably have to return to anywaye. In short, Redout II’s career length benefits neither the casual players nor the completionists in any fashion whatsoever, and may in fact hurt the experience as a whole for many players.
