Head above water.
I love a good wave racing game. Ever since I got my hands on Wave Race for the N64, I have been a fan of shredding the water against a pack of opponents. Since Nintendo has all but forgotten about their beloved franchise, it is up to several indie developers to fill the void. The original Riptide GP titles started on mobile, then got ported to PC and console, and actually turned out pretty good. Now with the newest iteration the team has focused on the larger platforms, and crafted yet another fine entry in the wave racing genre.
One of my biggest gripes with the previous game was the lack of interesting tracks. A lot of them focused mainly on circuits, and felt really bland after hammering through them several times. Renegade fixes that by adding more elaborate courses that are much more interesting to play. Larger waves, big drops and jumps, and better locations just make for a more enjoyable ride.
MSRP: $14.99
Platforms: PC, XB1, PS4
Price I’d Pay: $14.99
The career mode still remains the focus. Players race through series of race types, earn XP and money to upgrade their crafts, and even partake in boss races to unlock new characters. The progression is great, but the same issue that cropped up in the previous game still haunts this title. The difficulty spike ramps up quick. By the end of the first series of races, I went from dominating the pack, to struggling to place third, and let’s not talk about the boss battles. These guys race perfect lines, and rarely gave me a chance to pass them.
It is frustrating, especially for a game that plays so well, and excels on most other levels. This difficulty forced me to go back and grind the same races over and over, upgrading my craft much further than I would need to simply move to the next tier of races.
One of the biggest requests for the console versions last time was online play. The PC version had it, and now all the versions do. Playing online is a blast, and this game even supports four player split screen play, which is nice. Multiplayer is fun thanks to the array of modes the game offers. Online races are still not as full as I would like them to be, but when I got into a match, it was certainly a blast.
The visuals are about what to expect from a lower-priced game, but the real star are the new track locales, and the water physics. The team at Vector Unit has really nailed down what makes these games fun: the waves. The music however, is extremely generic and forced me to turn it off, which is something I rarely ever do.
Riptide GP Renegade is a solid follow-up. I really wish they would tweak the difficulty though, as it stands it gets far too difficult, far too quickly in career mode. This stunts progression, and makes continuing on a real grind. However, if you are like me and simply love the wave racing genre, this is yet another solid entry in a category we get far too few games in.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
This game was reviewed on an ORIGIN PC
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Z87N
- Liquid Cooling: Origin Frostbyte 120 Liquid Cooling
- Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K Quad-Core
- Memory: Kingston HyperX 8GB 1600 MHz
- Graphics Card: Single NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN (6GB)
