Ride to Hell: Retribution

Ride to Hell: Retribution offers gamers the chance to live out their biker gang fantasy, complete with reckless violence, fast motorcycles, and questionable morals. Playing as soldier and biker Jake Conway, it's up to you to fend off rival gangs and make money for your gang in the small town of Dead End. Armed with a variety of guns and melee weapons as you ride your trusty motorcycle, you must travel around to various locations, defeating enemies along the way. Although the concept of Ride to Hell: Retribution sounds interesting, it simply fails in almost every way possible, making it a hard game to recommend.

Main Game Features

• Experience life in a biker gang
• Third-person exploration and action
• Purchase new weapons and motorcycle parts

Story

Ride to Hell: Retribution takes place in 1969 and follows Jake Conway, a biker who returns home after serving in the Vietnam War. Although things are tough at first, he eventually grows accustomed to life with his younger brother Mikey and Uncle Mack, who are part of his biker gang. Unfortunately, during an encounter with a group of rival bikers known as the Devil's Hand, Mikey is killed and Jake is injured. Refusing to end the cycle of violence, Jake pledges to earn his revenge against the Devil's Hand and begins snuffing them out around town. As his vengeance grows and Jake works his way up the totem pole, he meets some new friends who are willing to help him on his bloodthirsty quest.

While this all sounds interesting at a surface level, Ride to Hell: Retribution stumbles a lot, rarely offering anything noteworthy or interesting. More often than not, it tries to imitate better games like Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned but to poor results. Jake is a decent protagonist with an interesting backstory, but he does so many unlikable things that it's hard to root for him. The supporting cast of characters are either offensively underdeveloped or simply act as a way to move the story forward. Overall, the story in Ride to Hell: Retribution feels clumsily written and amateurish, with some serious missteps at every turn.

Gameplay

Unfortunately, the gameplay in Ride to Hell: Retribution isn't much better, as many aspects of it feel broken, frustrating, or unfinished. While it was originally designed as an open-world game, the majority of the story plays out in a linear fashion, leaving little room for the player to explore. At the start of a mission, you usually ride your motorcycle to a location of interest, dodging obstacles and sliding around corners. Once you reach the mission area, you simply progress through it by killing enemies using your guns or melee weapons. Combat feels awkward and unsatisfying, with mediocre animations and lots of unfair deaths that feel like a bad impersonation of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Using the money you earn by completing missions and selling contraband, you can buy new weapons or upgrade your motorcycle, but these features feel unnecessary. Besides the beginning sections of levels, you can't ride your motorcycle around town and there's no extra content to keep you interested. Combat is also very basic and missions can be finished without much effort, so buying new weapons feels like a waste. Worse yet are the many glitches and bugs you'll encounter while playing, as the game has not been optimized and feels like a rough draft.

Conclusion

If you're eager to be a biker and live life in the fast lane, you can do better than Ride to Hell: Retribution. This poorly designed action game is more frustrating than it is fun, and after a few levels, you'll probably lose interest. It's a shame that the developers didn't take more time and stick to their original vision, as the game has a decent concept that could've been lots of fun.

Pros

• One of the few modern biker games
• Mixture of action and driving
• Easy to understand objectives

Cons

• Mediocre graphics and lots of glitches
• Controls are weird
• The game feels unfinished