Redline

Redline is a Car-Combat/FPS hybrid. It's fast-paced and has some interesting ideas up it's sleeve for sure. It seems a bit ambitious but unfortunately seems to have either rushed production values or not reign them in properly. First I'd like to briefly point out the good I observed in my experience: *Lovably hokey voice overs (Love me some cheezy VO which was common back in the day!) *Lots of cars-- and they all look really cool! *Fun to toy around with the cars and their unique weaponry *Being able to drop in/out of your vehicle any time you like *Graphical aesthetic. Minimalist, but nice. Now, as cool as these features are in the game, it has some extremely annoying pitfalls that are simply impossible to ignore which I feel need further expanding upon to get an idea for why I'm unable to give a recommendation on this title: *Accessibility: Getting this old game to run is a bit of a hassle and you have to know what you're after. There's some guides to help with that, but some of these issues out of the box are quite inexcusable for a modern re-release. The game is crash prone, riddled with FPS issues and countless other problems I had even after patching it with various fan-fixes. Now personally I don't mind this but it could be a big turn away for many players I can imagine. *Level design: The level design is pretty awful, but the missions do go by fast so sometimes you're too immersed in the carnage and the mission ends before it can become too cumbersome...Usually. Maps are generally 'large' but you can sweep right by them due to how fast your vehicle can tread around. Geometry is basic, especially interiors which look downright abysmal, even for the late 90s. *Story: The story is just fluff on top for the carnage. There's nothing here really-- it's very basic Fallout/Mad Max post-apoc gang chaos and that's about all there is to it. *FPS/On-foot mode: There is no camera sway, no footsteps, VERY little feedback in this mode. Usually the only way I'd know I was even taking damage is the health indicator flashing at me (and on higher resolutions, even less noticeable...) This was a horrible design choice as several points in the game you are -forced- to go on foot. This was a pretty big let-down for me as this feature seemed like such a treat at first, but in practice it falls apart completely and feels cheap. *Vehicle controls: This is a pretty bad one. Vehicles are fun to play around with, but when actually controlling them mid-combat they are very awkward to maneuver quickly enough, get caught on terrain, or bump to the point you're flying off the ground constantly. I even had times when the game just flat out broke and I launched through the terrain or dropped through it. Ouch. *AI: The AI in this game is extremely erratic and stupidly fast/responsive in vehicles, and the on-foot AI is basic-- but in all the WRONG ways. Half the time they won't even notice you, the other half of the time they notice you TOO quickly. It's horrendously unbalanced and bipolar to the point you will become frustrated due to lack of challenge, or way too much, way too quickly, which brings me to my next, and biggest point... *Difficulty curve: This is the part that bothered me the most. The final quarter of the game is a complete chore. The game's difficulty spikes suddenly and absurdly in the final 4 or so missions which becomes wearisome -very- quickly and the smallest mistake costs you your rig -and- your health all in one swoop. It is incredibly unforgiving if you mess up, and with how awful the controls can be, this happens a lot beyond your control. The AI issue mentioned above makes this all so much worse. Car dogfights are supposed to be fun, you'd think? Well, not in this game-- at least not once you get mid-way through the game. You're offered little to no time to actually enjoy the new rigs you're given as the slightest error means you're dead due to how ridiculously fast combat gets. Combat becomes incredibly annoying for all the wrong reasons. Enemy vehicle reaction time is stupidly high (also, screw those super tanky turrets. "What were they thinking?") and the moment they see you nearby, or you shoot them they tend to lash back in milliseconds. It's absurd. They also tend to tail you so aggressively that it becomes impossible to have fun swooping on them or getting the jump on them. Perhaps some enjoy the brutality here, but I found it lazy design as these same vehicles often got stuck running into a wall or debris without knowing how to back up. So I call bad AI design on this one that results in artificial difficulty and redundant trial and error... *Carjacking claim is misleading: In this game you can't even car-jack until a good deal into the campaign from what I gather, and even then it's limited to a special EMP-based ammo you need to find in missions. You can only ever hold one at a time, and usually if your car blows up, you're dead in seconds in the later half of the game, so why even bother with this feature at all if it gets you killed 90% of the time? Terrible design choice, here. All in all it's a game I really wanted to like and loved the concept for, but ultimately it fails, especially mid-way and never recovers that initial steam it has going in the first few missions. You just aren't given time to really -enjoy- the vehicles, you don't even get to select them yourself! Not directly on a per-mission basis anyway. If you're really a completionist and must play every car-combat based game or FPS-like out there I suppose you could do worse, but this certainly isn't in the top by any stretch of the imagination. Just know what you're getting into and expect some frustration.