Redout 2 Review: Zero Gravity Space Racing

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redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 3
redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 3

A zero gravity racing game of excellent workmanship, difficult to master and significantly improved in technique and formula compared to the past.

 

At the time of its arrival on the market, the first Redout was a kind of bolt from the blue. It was an independent video game that somehow tried to keep alive a genre, that of zero-G racing, that the mainstream market seemed to have forgotten. Faced with a Nintendo refractory to the idea of ​​developing a new chapter of F-Zero and a Sony now orphaned of Wipeout, the Turin-based 34BigThings embarked on an almost senseless enterprise, bringing an anti-gravity course to the market to get into a niche microscopic and hope to give new hope to the genre.

Redout went well but not even the relaunch of the Wipeout Omega Collection on PlayStation 4 was somehow able to relaunch this type of titles. 34BigThings, however, was not demoralized and continued to work on improving Redout to this day, the day it officially released the game’s big sequel. Redout 2 is an incredible step forward for the team and the franchise, a clear improvement on all fronts. But let’s go step by step.

A revised formula

Looking at it from afar, Redout 2 could easily seem like the most classic of the second iterations of racing games: some new vehicles, some extra tracks and a good polishing pass to freshen everything up. It is not so. If it is true that the series has never hidden its noble inspirations from Wipeout, resulting in some ways a sort of spiritual heir, Redout 2 changes direction and embarks on a new path.

The formula has undergone heavy revisions and has definitively freed itself from its combat racing roots. First of all weapons have been removed to hit opponents in the race, in order to unmark the title from its arcade vein and fully embrace the racing nature. The driver’s driving ability is now the core of the experience. It is a very strong choice, which risks ousting an entire part of the public in search of a casual experience, and which consequently speaks to the most hardcore fanbase to give it a title capable of challenging its reflexes and abilities. It seems like a minor change, but it’s not. It is a clear turnaround, in search of a strong identity capable of detaching Redout 2 even from possible new iterations of the titles that openly inspire it. The quantity and organization of the contents also change, finally grouped within a career mode chock full of increasingly difficult eventsproposed with criteria and justified by the possibility of obtaining great rewards every time you complete one.

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In fact Redout 2 is a real maturation of the original conceptcapable of detaching the creature of 34BigThings from that image a little too quotationist of the past to make it stand on its own legs. The price to pay is a difficult and punitive barrier to entry but once you get to grips with the controls you can only fall in love with the intricacies of the game’s gameplay.

Net of this, however, the great effort made by the team regarding the enjoyment of the experience should be underlined. Not only are there many selectable difficulty levels but Considerable work has been done with regard to driving aids. It is in fact possible to select one of the many available presets or create a totally customized one, thus adjusting when and how much the aids will come into action and make the ship more easily manageable, whether you are “on land”, whether you are. in flight.

A credible future

It is clear that this second Redout benefited from a larger budget than the debut title, with the team appearing to have wisely invested in the crucial elements of the experience. The game has not only improved enormously in terms of its technical performance but also benefits from an artistic direction finally free from the technical limits of the first chapter.

Redout 2 explodes in a myriad of lights, colors, reflections and particles in every single frame, in tracks with simply crazy layouts and in the meantime it also manages to go beyond racing, telling a credible and well-characterized remote future. The fact that the developers have clearly focused on something so “foreign” to the heart of the gameplay like worldbuilding it is truly appreciable, because they have outlined a narrative universe that frames the crazy circuit races that wind their way through cities and breathtaking natural landscapes. We are not just talking about the splendid environments in which the circuits have descended, which will take the pilots from the slopes of Mount Fuji to peer into the void at the center of a black hole, but also about their geographical and political history.

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redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 2
redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 2

It might seem like a trifle, but you are welcomed into each of the new locations from a cutscene that tells the story it contributes to lowering the players even more deeply in the races of Redout 2. There is talk of goodies, which however often manage to lengthen the life of titles in the genre. The only section that has not been able to enjoy a graphic and artistic revamp is that of the HUD, much more elegant in the past than the one included in this second chapter.

Inhuman speed

Net of everything we have talked about so far, however, we get to the heart of the matter: how do you drive in Redout 2? The answer is that 34BigThings is a rather difficult video game, which expands the control scheme of the

redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 1
redout 2 review zero gravity space racing 1

first chapter to deepen it. Vehicle physics is now more complete, to the point that in addition to the direction and horizontal position of the ship it is now possible to control (both in flight and on the ground) the lift of the vehicle, in order to make it adapt better to the very steep slopes of certain sections of the tracks, just think of the turns of the death. You then play with your thumbs on both analogs, in such a way as to have as much control as possible on the airship, while taking care of the dosage of accelerator and air brake, as well as the turbo. The engines of the Redout 2 aircraft are in fact supercharged at any time with the push of a button, the only problem is that this progressively overheats the engine, which at temperatures beyond the limit will eventually consume the vehicle’s health bar up to make it explode. Added to this is the ship’s hyperboost, which it supplies to the engine the maximum power for a short period of timeto which you can add the speed bonus given by the turbo, as long as you can keep the overheating resulting from the combination of the two under control.

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The early days in command of the airships are not the best, because familiarizing yourself with their control system is a long and tiring process that necessarily starts from a real study phase, which calls for you to launch yourself on the track to become familiar with the crazy speeds at which you move even without installed upgrades. The words of Henri Toivonen, legendary world rally driver, come to mind, who spoke of group B cars as devilish monsters faster than human reflexes … and this time we are talking about alien racing cars capable of reaching 2000 km / h. The feeling, in certain moments, is that of being totally at the mercy of the mixture of crazy tracks and ultrasonic speeds, “lulled” as you are by the game’s electronic soundtrackwhich ranges from drum ‘n’ bass, psytrance and goa.

redout 2 review zero gravity space racing
redout 2 review zero gravity space racing

This is where a key factor comes into play, namely muscle memory. Learning to drive is one thing but to tame the over 70 tracks available you need to memorize the layout, forcefully impress it on the fingertips. In this way the automatisms compensate for the slowness of thought in the face of a double loop that ends with a jump which – to be concluded – calls for a timely correction of the trajectory in flight. In short, Redout 2 is a complex driving experience and he is a particularly severe master but when you begin to see the first improvements the sensations he can give are priceless.