Source

Twisted Metal 2, PlayStation (1996)

Right?! Now I'm itching to play again!

COMPLETED: Riptide GP: Renegade

Done! I got a little addicted there. It doesn't just invoke the nostalgia of Jet Moto and Hydro Thunder: it was also a lot of fun! Though the final challenges were...cheap.

So the game is fun. I really enjoyed it. I even like how they handled tricks, with which I have become more comfortable. You basically have to do tricks to maintain your boost to even have a fighting chance by the end of the game. But Imma complain a bit:

Not Enough Levels

This game feels inspired, in part, by Jet Moto (especially the ruins level, which is my favorite for that reason), and Jet Moto 1 only had 10 levels (one more than Riptide's 9). But that was a 1996 game. I think we've come to expect more of our entertainment.

I think lacking more than number of levels is level variety. Jet Moto 1 had four biomes: tropical island, rural swamp, snowy, and met track in the sky. Jet Moto 2 upped it to include even more variety: including a roller coaster and mine-shaft.

Riptide's levels mostly look the same. There's a military base, air base, and power plant that all look the same. Even typing this, I'm not quite sure I'm thinking of three different levels. In design, the levels do have their own personality, but they don't have enough character (for me).

15 would have been a good number of tracks ;)

Bullshit difficulty

For the most part, I was able to beat the challenges fairly easily. Sometimes I needed vehicular upgrades or more practice with boost-building tricks. But by the time you get to the final challenges--the BS reveals itself.

Firstly, the AI racers are immovable. They can bump me out of the way, or pressure me out of my racing line. But I can't seem to do anything to them. That's not a horrible thing until you get to the later racers where victory often comes at fractions of a second, and most of the racers are in a pack. So fighting to get ahead, I felt bullied by a computer.

What's worse, many of the tracks feature police riders. Their speeds are seemingly unlimited: as they can catch up to me no matter. They also seemed dead set on only attacking the player. So not only am I fighting 7 racers, but I've got 2 other bullies bashing me around and no matter how fast I go or how well I race, they're always wife me: bumping me off course, reducing me speed, pushing me away from ramps to perform tricks.

I've lost hours of my life dealing with bullshit cop bots fucking with me.

Because the cop-bots disrupt one's ability to win: it removes skill and player agency to win, replacing it with random chance. Maybe I get lucky and the cop doesn't cut me off and slam on it's brakes. Maybe I get lucky and I don't miss that ramp I need to boost into first place cause a cop rams me. Maybe I get lucky and I'm able to hold a good racing line because the cops aren't bashing me from all sides.

It felt cheap.

Then there's also the AI. There's some rubber-banding happening, which often keeps games interesting: opponents never get too far ahead so that there's no hope, but also the player is never able to completely wipe the floor with other racers. I don't really like rubber banding, as it also disrupts the player's skill.

It was particularly apparent in a few "boss battles" on the highest difficulty. I would see AI racers pull away from me despite me being at full boost. But then at another part of the track the racer appeared to slam on their brakes and come to a near stop for no reason. It just looked like program behavior. Maybe it was meant to provide an exciting experience--but it mostly just pissed me off in the final stages.

I still like it though

The bullshit difficulty didn't really become an issue till the end of the game (where strangely most of the vehicles are unlocked but don't provide advantage of one another...). I could have stopped playing sooner. Who cares if I get every star in the career mode? I do. That's who (unfortunately). So I was addicted by the accessible gameplay and charming experience, but driven mad by the cheap difficulty. I still really like the game. But I need some space before I play it again.

I still need to try online mode though...

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