Hiya everyone, time for something I haven't done in a while, a game review. And I chose quite the game to go with as you can tell, the infamous Ride to Hell Retribution, the game that is known to have broken many reviewers and drivin many insane to where some have never completed it. Some context here, this thing was released in 2013 and had been cancled and revived numerous times and was meant to be an openworld biker game taking place in the 1960's.

Yup I was willing to torture myself for your amusement, enjoy.^^

Plot: You play as a biker named Jake Conway who is a Vietnam Veteren returning back to the States. From the start we are introduced to Mikey(Jake's younger brother) and Mac(Jake's uncle) and after a run in with a rival biker gang known is the Devils Hand which put a hit on Jake's entire family. After a failed attempt to try to get the player invested in Mikey he is killed off and Jake is shot and left to dead.

After which you magically respawn and turns into a revenge story. Now to get it out of the way the plot here is pretty straightforward overall and fairly predictable. Plus there is basically no character development here at all with the latter half having exposition dumps.

Now when it comes to Jake... I get it he is doing retribution to avenge Mikey and his family, but this guy rivals the Joker in terms of chaos at times and commonsense going out the window.

For example about halfway through the game Jake has to get through an electric fence. Now in any other game typically one would snip the wires to it or just find another way in... but not Jake.... and this is where the scene goes from 0 to 100 instantly. He goes across the street to grab a semi-truck and these truckers who are not affiliated with the Devils Hand at all attack him to which Jake beats them all down like the Terminator. After getting said truck he goes across the freaking town to the local powerplant which is also a dam, along the way just running over everything and everyone, after that he gets to the plant and said workers decide to fight him with Jake executing them, after that he detonates the truck, the explosions somehow claim the whole power plant as Jake dives into the water to avoid being caught in the blast.

*Dial up noises*

Yeah, let this set the tone going forward, because it just gets more insane from here on out.

I get it Jake is suppose to be an anti-hero like the Punisher, I think that is what they were going with but it is fumbled so hard it is pretty confusing. You will see a lesser repeat of this later on where Jake has to get a bike to get to another leader of the Devil's Hand and to get it he has to go to a mining location, the miners who clearly are braindead and despite seeing he is clearly not with the Hand at all decide to just attack him, to which Jake wipes out a small army of miners and gets the bike.

The story overall here makes little if any sense with tons of jumpcuts, loading screens inbetween every cutscene and level. Now the story is a little confusing and disjoined but that is because this went from being an openworld game to a liner 3rd person shooter mascarading as an openworld rpg, you will be lost at least some of the time at best and you won't get over you feel like you are missing something.

So what would motivate the Devil's Hand to put a hit on a whole family? Well, Jake's dad had a massive gambling problem and bet Jake's and Mikey's mom in a game when it comes to the Devil's Hand leader Caeser and lost. So Jake's dad took her along with the bike Caeser also won and fled. I am summerizing but that is the jest, yup it is all over a broad and a bike basically... not bad motivations per se but the way it is done here will make you hear crickets because you will end up not caring about any character in this game at all, matter a fact characters just come and go sometimes at random, add to the fact no one really has depth and the story drags too long, it is a perfect set up for what feels like a waste of time.

Time for the meat up the game, get ready to read what I had to play for 12-14 freaking hours...

Gameplay: To be blunt this game is an average third person shooter with a fake openworld hub. There is a cover system, some of which is destructible and you will need to use it because sometime you have so many enemies shooting at you that it is mandatory. For weapons we have four main weapons with three in each, pistols, assault rifles, shotguns and submachine guns. Explosive weapons being dynamite and the rpg with various melee weapons. Smg's and shotguns are useless, heck shotgun pellets just disappear after about three feet of travel. The best weapons being the most expensive pistol and assault rifle which you can get from the get-go from a weapon vender.

As for the combat, on foot you basically have guys that shoot and morons that charge with the occasional Jason Vorhees that eat bullets like bb pellets. The melee is a worse take on the Batman Arkham system, once in a while you can do a rage takedown that got me laughing a good chunk of the time and brings down enemies instantly, but melee combat is a slog and completely useless unless you buy the five skills for it. As for the shooting anything that is not a headshot is very ineffective, it is either riddle the morons with bullets or just fire a round into their skull. And let me tell you, speaking as someone who loves Gears of War, I thought I got good training with doing headshots, Ride to Hell put that to shame as it will get to where you can pop off headshots like they are nothing and every time you do the game does this whole slow mo thing for a moment.

Now we have the bike and the things related to it, you can customize your bike pretty well and surprisingly there is a lot but it is all cosmetic. There is racing and bike combat but every vehicle feels like it is driving on ice coated in vasiline. Bike combat boils down to quick time event bashing with one in a while slow motion shooting with your sidearm(seriously use the best pistol!) and with the defeated enemies they fly off to the right or left and explode, heck if the enemies just hit random crap and get stuck they explode.... for no reason! There are a few on rail shooting sections where you are in a sidecar shooting one of the best machine guns ever the M60 and it is basically a peashooter as when you have to use it to take down one of the biker leaders you have to fill him with hundreds of rounds... in slow mo.... the hell? Well at least it isn't another bad example of the mg42.

*Sighs* I put it off long enough, now there are snu snu scenes in this game. And this is where I just bursted out laughing, every time this happend I laughed up a storm because of rediculous it looks. Image two fully clothed rag dolls rubbing upagainst eachother and there you go. Basically these women you rescue and woo without taking off your shoes refill your health and ammo, which is pointless as health regenerates and ammo pick ups are plentiful, they were just trying to get that "edgy" M rating. Here is a thought and this is going to make you shudder, but originally these scenes were obviously suppose to be... you know unclothed but because no one knew how to animate women they went with the clothed crap. And shockingly there are attractive female character models but none are part of these scenes... seriously?

This game is also bugs and glitches galore, I kept on having aiming glitches, animation glitches, pop in all the time and screen tearing to match. But towards the end I encountered very bad game breaking bugs. For one bossfight(forgot his name but weilds a chainsaw) the game freaked out as I was beating him up and he disappeared with the game telling me to chase after him.... I couldn't because I was trapped in the first room I was fighting him in, had to restart the level because reloading a checkpoint did nothing. In the second room of this, the game went to a black screen once and Jake got killed... yeah I almost raged quit when that happened.

The next game breaking stuff was with the last boss and chase of the game. For a start I had to do a full level restart because at the start of the chase you have to do a slow mo sequence and shoot a tanker to take out the guys supporting him, this didn't happen reguardless of how many times I reloaded the check point. The next major glitch happend about half way through with another slow mo sequence where instead of drawing my sidearm, Jake would draw the freaking rpg and when in the heat of the moment you fire and causing a game over. Keep in mind in the area before I chase I had the pistol equipped.

During this chase scene this is where I was questioning all of my life choices and almost raged quit multiple times. But I refused to let the game beat me and so I managed to make it past all that and beat it by the skin of my patience.

Now I can handle an average game, but with the issues this game has it just serves as a means to aggrevate you. I went from laughing at everything to being basically bored death to then wanting to just break my 360 controller, that is quite an accomplishment.

The AI of this game is braindead, many enemies will just stay out in the open with zero self-awareness or when they do take cover some will stay in place without shooting and the enemies that charge have no sense of self-preservation. The best strategy is exactly like Callisto Protocol, just shoot everything that moves and avoid melee because of how freaking slow and pointless it is.

Sound: Voice acting and sound effects suck aside from the weapons which really do spund like they pack a punch. The volume is this game is all over the place though, when there are engine sound effects you can't hear anyone talk, thank goodness for subtitles. The music though is amazing, I wish there was more of it and you know the music from the 60's this thing was suppose to have.

Graphics: Graphics here are nothing to write home about even when everything works, it looks like an early ps2 game as in a launch title... when the blasted graphics decide to freaking load that is!

Final thoughts: Alright now with all of that said, the obvious question is: Is this the worst game ever? Honestly I don't think it is the worst thing ever(keep in mind this is coming from a guy who likes Mindjack), it is just an average shooter that has clearly had a ton of mismanagement with poor planning, throw in the game breaking bugs and the glitches that make you question everything and it will destroy any form of expectation. Like I said this game took me like 12-14 hours on normal but wheather you are willing to stick with it or not that is the question. By hour eight I was begging this game to just end, but it just drags on and on with pointless side missions, levels that trail slower than an old fart on an all cheese diet. And I got this screaming headache from playing this by the way from all the frustration and wanting to just do anything else.

In conclusion, this is a game that sort of does require being played to be believed, but I would never recommend playing this, that being said I would gladly use it as a form of torture. Heck I was willing to try the game on the hardest difficulty but with the onrails shooting bits with the M60 you just get killed instantly which means it is basically impossible. I should get a platinum medal or something for this, this game really was a Road to Hell... yeah well I blazed the freaking highway and claimed retribution after diving into the pits of Inferno! AHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Score: 3 out of 10

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