Redout Review

WARNING: WHILE MANY GAMES OFTEN FLASH NEEDLESS EPILEPSY WARNINGS, THE ONE FOR THIS GAME IS ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED. IF YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF OR ARE PRONE TO EPILEPTIC SEIZURES, PLEASE DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME, AS THERE ARE NO OPTIONS TO REDUCE OR REMOVE THE ASSAULT OF FLASHING LIGHTS AND COLORS THAT ARE PREVALENT THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE GAME.

Following the abandonment of F-Zero and WipEout, AG racing has unfortunately been trapped in a perpetual state of limbo with little hope of returning. Nintendo has expressly stated having little interest in their franchise, and the original development team of WipEout have long since been dissolved, diminishing fans’ hope of AG racing ever returning to its former glory. However, there have been valiant efforts from smaller studios in an endeavor to relive said glory, though the consistency of their quality has been shaky, making it difficult for the good ones to reach their audience. One such example of the good ones includes Redout, an AG racing game released in September 2016 and developed by 34BigThings, an indie studio based in Italy. With an apt tagline stating that you will “race faster than ever,” Redout offers unparalleled adrenaline in its take on AG racing, featuring driving so frenetic that you would be convinced of experiencing the vertigo of the pilot yourself.

Presentation

Redout takes place in the year 2560 AD. After having fully stripped Earth of its resources, mankind scrambled for any alternatives to keep themselves afloat. While some chose a life of struggle on the now-desolate planet, the rest of humanity left to attempt colonization outside of Earth. They would eventually succeed in populating Mars following a series of terraforming operations, and it would soon become the most advanced human-populated society. A branch of the European Space Agency, the organization responsible for constructing the drones that would conduct the terraforming operations, would eventually discover their incredible potential as racing vehicles. As such, they would financially back the first ever AG racing competition and eventually the inception of the Solar Redout Racing League (SRRL), a sport that is now one of the most popular in the universe; a sport that you are now participating in.

While not immediately forthcoming, Redout does come with a surprising amount of lore that you can find if you’d like to immerse yourself in its world. Each racing team, ship, power up, and environment has at least some degree of backstory surrounding their involvement in the SRRL, and it can be quite absorbing to learn about (especially the amusingly self-aware and vague interpretation of respawning during a race as a mystery to all but the SRRL), even if they are strictly confined to layers of text that is buried behind a vague button prompt. The career mode itself does come with a light story centered around you, the pilot’s journey towards becoming the champion of the SRRL, as shown through short event briefings, described by your handler. There’s nothing beyond these briefings, but it still tells a story surrounding the sisyphean task of becoming the best and the toll it can have on the undertaker in question.

The style of Redout perfectly suits its insane racing environment. Graphical detail is sparse resulting from its low-poly art-style, but it remains eye-popping thanks to its fantastic lighting. Textures are simultaneously blurry and detailed, as if you were looking at them from the window of a speeding car, with the car in this context being an unstable quadcopter that breaks the speed of sound on a regular basis. However, if you stop to actually look closer, you’ll find that Redout’s environments are lushly detailed and full of life. Whether you are speeding through the sandy cities in Cairo, the watery aftermath of post-global-warming Alaska, or the overgrown foliage of Abruzzo, each environment is a carefully crafted masterpiece of post-apocalyptic science fiction, showcasing both the beauty and the trepidation that comes from navigating these landscapes.

The sound design also does a stellar job of communicating the staggering speed, from the wind blowing against your vehicle, to the powerful “whoosh” of a massive boost, to the many visceral collisions against the walls. Redout is particularly “in-your-face” with its aural communication, and there is no better additional proof than the soundtrack that accompanies the action. Composed primarily by Aram Jean Shahbazians (though featuring other artists too for certain tracks), the OST is a fierce combination of electronic instrumentation with heavy, yet melodic guitar lines and a driving percussion in the mold of the “drum and bass” genre, though there is also a few orchestral scores in there too.

On top of being fantastic tracks, they are also partially dynamic in the sense that the musical ideas within the song can ramp up or settle down, depending on how well you are doing. It is pure adrenaline to be neck-and-neck with another racer, fighting for first place on the last lap of a race, only for the soundtrack to kick it up to high gear and build to a dramatic climax as you barrel through the final straightaway to the finish line. Put simply, it is pure aural bliss.

“Subsurface” composed by Aram Jean Shahbazians and Nils Iver Holtar. Video uploaded by 77NightshadE77.

“Great Dark Spot” composed by Aram Jean Shahbazians. Video uploaded by TheMarineten.

Gameplay

Redout takes a unique twist in its driving mechanics, both in how it controls and how the craft moves around. While acceleration and deceleration are handled with the shoulder buttons and steering is handled with the left stick, another means of controlling your ship is introduced called strafing, where moving the right stick will horizontally move your ship to the left or right. Given that this stick is also responsible for pitch control, the game practically becomes a twin-stick racer, an uncommon control scheme for the genre that works surprisingly well. However, if you are more comfortable with a control scheme that more closely resembles WipEout, the game offers an alternative control binding setting that more closely reflects its inspirations. You are also given a boost that you can utilize by depleting energy that accumulates as you race, allowing you to go even faster or recover your speed after a tricky turn.

While Redout is undoubtedly an arcade racer at its roots, it takes a page from sim racers in how it handles its physics. Instead of controlling futuristic cars with suspiciously responsive handling, you are effectively piloting an unstable quadcopter with rockets strapped to its rear like an alternate universe’s equivalent of Dick Dastardly’s Mean Machine (and without the vast arsenal of weapons and trickery). In other words, turns are going to require significantly more effort to pull off than previously, since you need to effectively divert your momentum in a different direction to retain speed. While most racers utilize animations and subtle tricks to mimic the feeling of vehicular weight, Redout offers a hands-on approach to feeling your craft fiercely contesting the laws of physics as you negotiate each tight corner.

As a result of this weighty style of racing, Redout demands that you adopt a different mindset from what more traditional titles in the genre have taught you to race effectively, one that may be off-putting and/or dissatisfying to play with. Dealing with turns efficiently will require that you frequently collide with the walls of the track in a fashion where only the rear portions of your ship are on the grind to minimize health and speed loss. It is a stark contrast to the perfect racing lines and wall avoidance that games like WipEout heavily encourages, and will certainly turn off fans of that gameplay style.

Surely a game encouraging wall collisions wouldn’t be satisfying to play, right? The best way to describe the sheer joy of Redout is to put these differing AG racers in comparison to fighting styles in movies. There are movies like John Wick, where the protagonist in question is deliberate in their actions, always finding a way to needle their way through combat scenarios unscathed or with minimal damage. John is calm, collected, and never lets his adrenaline overpower him. These kinds of movies are your WipEout games; you are rewarded for navigating tricky circuits and combat scenarios with your ship in near-pristine condition.

Then you have movies like Nobody, where your protagonist nearly goes primal at every turn, losing himself in the moment whilst viciously beating up bad guys. He is also no stranger to mistakes; he will get bruised up and may even lose on occasion, but what keeps him going is that he bounces back as quickly as he was beaten down with a vengeance. The stellar sound design makes each hit feel thick and brutal, substituting clean badassery with the adrenaline of a messy bar brawl. Redout is a deeply visceral game in a similar light. You are constantly feeling on the edge of losing control while still being in full control, fighting the laws of physics at every turn to not only keep your ship on the track, but to also stay ahead of the competition, and it is a rush that you simply don’t get when you’re told to avoid the walls.

When mastered, expertly yanking your craft around sharp hairpins and daring shortcuts is racing catharsis in its purest form, though this nirvana will unfortunately take some time to reach. Apart from a brief tutorial screen that flashes once during your first event, there is virtually zero onboarding assistance provided to you, and you are left to figure out the controls and the physics by yourself. While it is admirable that a game respects the players intelligence and trusts them to figure out the physics themselves, the severe contrast in racing style makes learning incredibly unintuitive. While the details of going fast and turning in Redout are more complex, the basics for doing well in a race are relatively straightforward: boost on long straightaways and keep your nose away from the walls. The further your nose is from the wall on a collision, the less speed you will lose overall.

Additionally, there comes the hiccup of the game’s difficulty curve, which strictly comes in the form of track difficulty and speed, leaving AI difficulty relatively the same throughout the game. The game does give you three difficulty options to choose from at the very start, though even if you are able to find them buried in the options menu, you will still come to discover that there are practically no changes made from one difficulty to another. You could be playing on Rookie and likely still be facing the AI as if they were on Veteran difficulty.

Throughout the author’s numerous hours playing the game, he has perceived virtually zero difference, thus rendering them completely inconsequential. While the gradual introduction of faster speed classes does help ease players into the game, the transitions between speed classes are inconsistent in their timing. Class II for instance contains a wide variety of events, while Class III is fairly short before dropping you straight into the hornet’s nest that is Class IV. This can result in hitting a few learning snags along the way as players who are struggling at Class III may be finding themselves getting demolished upon making a quick advancement to Class IV. As such, some time investment will be required from the player if they wish to make the most of Redout’s gameplay.

Redout offers a broad variety of customization options to fit the style that most represents the gameplay you are comfortable with, starting with the ship selection, of which there are 6 teams to choose from. If you played through the WipEout Omega Collection, then most of these should feel right at home. ESA is Redout’s equivalent of Feisar, a slightly slower craft with remarkable handling and acceleration, making it ideal for beginners, while Lunare Scuderia is more like AG Systems, sacrificing energy and endurance to offer the lightest possible package. Additionally, you are able to equip power ups to further enhance your racing ability. Active power ups are effectively items that you equip for the entirety of the race, borrowing from your energy pool to provide a meaningful bonus, the same energy that you use to fuel your boost, so decisions will need to be made wisely as to not only what power up you bring, but also when you use it during a race. This energy can be used to fuel a super turbo boost, it can drastically improve your ship’s grip for a brief period, or it can repair your ship’s health whilst also gaining a speed bonus, just to name a few. You are also able to bring a passive ability alongside an active power up; unlike their more involved counterpart, passive power ups act as more of a stat boost that can either amplify your strengths or balance out some of the weaker elements of your ship.

The options available do sufficiently assist the player in areas that may be of struggle, providing a greater safety net for mistakes. For example, are you dying a lot? Equipping the power up that decreases respawn time will make those deaths significantly less punishing. Alternatively, if you’d like to reduce the damage you take, you can also equip ships and power ups that increase your endurance, making you an effective tank. While these alternatives are great training wheels, they unfortunately do not go far beyond that, as they are severely outclassed by the options strictly designed to help you race faster. More specifically, they are outclassed by the power ups that give you speed boosts in any way, shape or form. Once you learn a track’s layout, the next step to mastery is learning how to traverse them quickly, so the other power ups are quick to become obsolete. This is especially true for any power ups catered towards being neck-to-neck with other racers, since it is generally advisable to be as far ahead of the competition as possible. While these tools are undoubtedly useful for beginners, do not go into Redout expecting a variety of competitively viable options, especially if you intend to chase the leaderboards or delve into online multiplayer.

While most of the game modes in Redout consist of racing others and your own best times, there is a healthy dosage of variety that often necessitates a shift in strategy to find success. For example, a “Pure” race/time attack demands that you play without using any of your power ups, forcing you to put aside any crutches and dust up your fundamentals. The “Instagib” spin on time attack increases the damage you take significantly and activates permadeath, meaning that you need to drive safely as well as quickly to score a great time. There is also “Survival,” where you complete as many laps as possible whilst avoiding mines strewn throughout the track. This turns the game into a test of controlling your ship as you needle through what is literally a minefield at breakneck speeds, and while it can be thrilling, it is also the shakiest game mode available, as it does not particularly mesh well with the driving physics unless you are equipped with the power ups that increase your stability. A particular highlight is the “Boss” game mode, where you race through every track from a locale in one go, with each track connected by a teleporter. While it is the racing equivalent of a boss rush, it’s a climactic accumulation of all of the core foundations that make Redout so enjoyable, condensed into a wonderful spectacle of a race.

The Platinum Trophy

There isn’t much to earning the platinum for Redout, only requiring that you to reach and win the final event of the career mode, completing some miscellaneous tasks, and unlocking things, including all Class I and Class IV ships, all power ups (both active and passive), and all upgrades for a single ship in both Class I and Class IV. The art of unlocking ships, upgrades, and powerups boils down to simply winning events to earn the sufficient money to purchase them, a means that will not result in an inevitable grind since you will need to play 45 separate events at minimum to earn a trophy, not including any additional attempts to earn a gold/platinum medal on said events. While you are required to complete a decent sum of events to reach the end, it’s ultimately in service of mastering the mechanics, and you are able to skip ones that you may find too difficult.

Completing the career mode will likely be the most challenging part of the platinum trophy for Redout, as you will need to place first overall in a tournament spanning 5 events of severely distinct difficulty. The first two events are relatively tame, taking place on tracks that you have been playing on since the start of your career. The third event is where things step up, as AI bots are considerably more competent, making racing on a relatively digestible track much more challenging. The final two events are where the difficulty spikes significantly. While the AI doesn’t get any better, the races take place on arguably the two hardest tracks in the entire game. While they aren’t long tracks, they are incredibly unforgiving in the technicality required to even survive a lap on them, let alone race in. On top of being in the fastest speed class, these last few races are 7-8 laps long, requiring endurance alongside speed.

While these events are tough, they are far from infallible, as there are multiple factors working in your favor to make this achievable. For starters, you do not have to win every event to win the tournament overall, meaning that having the most points by the end will still earn you the trophy! Running the Sulha or Koeniggsworth ship with the Turbo Boost as your active power up and Magnetic Stabilizer as your passive power up will make the tracks significantly easier to navigate efficiently. The turbo boost will give you tremendous power during straightaways, making overtaking a breeze. Magnetic Stabilizer, whilst not the objectively fastest option in every scenario, is a fantastic passive power up that gives your ship significantly greater magnetic grip on the track, making cornering on the harder tracks much easier. Whether you opt for Sulha or Koeniggsworth is entirely up to you; Sulha is a glass cannon with mediocre handling, while Koeniggsworth is a tank with remarkable handling and decent energy capacity, so feel free to pick whichever benefits you more. The final event may be hard, but it’s possible, even with the AI having a full lap’s head start!

Aside from career completion, there are some miscellaneous trophies to contend with, and among the standard fare of racing tasks two of them in particular may cause some trouble. The first of which is a simple online trophy requiring you to win one race against other players, a feat that would prove simple were it not for the servers being completely empty. The difficulty here is less a matter of dealing with buggy online shenanigans, but rather the tomfoolery of desperately finding other players to race with. Here again is proof that having friends who play obscure games is truly the toughest challenge above all.

The other snag you may encounter is “Better Than Ever,” requiring that you earn a single platinum medal for any event. A platinum medal is a score/time that is a step above the gold medal, and does not reveal its requirements to the player until they have been beaten. In a time/speed trial, they can be anywhere from 4-10 seconds ahead of the gold medal time, records that are comfortably in the upper echelon of the global leaderboards for said events and require a solid understanding of the map and the game’s mechanics to earn. That being said, there are quite a handful of events with incredibly lenient platinum medal requirements, especially those in the Speed event category. More specifically, “Boiling Point,” a Class III speed event falls into this category. While you will still need to learn the track and appropriate boosting patterns, there is more than enough time to save here to comfortably snag the platinum medal.

Ship: Sulha
Active: Turbo Boost
Passive: Magnetic Stabilizer

Conclusion

While the difficulty curve and lack of tutorialization may leave some players in the dust, Redout’s core mechanics are fantastic and far ahead of many of its contemporaries. This game is an entirely unique experience, especially if you have been playing WipEout for years, but adjusting to its quirks will reveal a racer that engages on a level rarely seen from others in the genre. The platinum does require some effort from the player to achieve, but is more than doable with time.