Road Rash Jailbreak

[Piperion Giles]

Thefirst in the series was Road Rash. That game managed to earn a great score which is a great start to the series. Next up is Road Rash II. That game earned an alright score, but nothing overly impressive. The third in the series is Road Rash 3: Tour De Force. That game managed to turn things around as it earned a great score as well. The fourth game in the series is Road Rash 3D. That game got a good score. The fifth game in the series is Road Rash 64. That game proved to be the height of the series earning the highest score out of all of them. So now, we bring the series home with the final entry in the series, Road Rash: Jailbreak.

While every game in the series before had, at best, a subtle storyline, this game actually features a fully fleshed out story in the main campaign mode. It follows the adventures of Spaz and Punt. The duel are bikers. Notably, Punt is a midget with antlers attached to his helmet. Part way through the game, Spaz gets busted. By the end of the game, your goal is to bust Spaz out of prison.

Where the game diverts from every previous game is the fact that there is no way to accumulate cash or points. You get a set amount of Rash points where you ultimately win a prize. You can either get a new weapon, supercharged weapon, or a nitro pack. A new weapon in your arsenal is always welcome news as you can get 1 of a number of different weapons.

In the races themselves, you race against 15 other opponents for a total of 16 bikers in a race. You have two attack buttons, a taunt button, a button that allows you to look back, acceleration, and a button that allows you to scroll through the weapons in your inventory.

A very familiar feature on the road are police. Police will ride their own bikes and try and crash you. If you get crashed by an officer, you are basically hoping that the officer continues on. If he sticks around, he can bust you running to your bike. You can always crash him to get him out of your hair.

Like Road Rash 64, start points and end points are placed on an interconnected map. The goal, of course, is to try and cross the finish line before anyone else. The downside here is that there are no collectible items found in the races themselves. Instead, you get breakables and various elements of scenery sharing the road with you.

One thing worth noting is that if you bust the warrant suspect, the descriptions will change on the next level, so it is definitely worth breezing through all the people being the warrants on each level.

Given that the best game in the series preceded this game, I was rather excited to play this one. With so much excellent replay value and overall excellent entertainment value, I thought this game would simply take the ideas found in the previous game and improve on them.

Another great feature that made Road Rash fascinating was the money. Accumulate your cash and upgrade your bike. While upgrading your bike was stripped out by the time the N64 iteration came around, cash defined the game in a very big way. In this game, you get vague Rash Cash. The game even just decides for you what you win at the end of the race. You have no control over how the cash is spent. When you beat a ranking, you just get pushed up to the next level and choose between two bikes. While you can go back and forth if you wish, that choice is also removed for the most part. So, the cash feature is largely scrapped.

In an extension to the previous point, the store feature that was introduced from the very beginning always gave this game a certain degree of strategy. As you might figure, the cash has been stripped out. As such, the store feature has also been completely scrapped as well.

A feature that was kept was the interconnected nature of the roads. The game takes place on a massive plot of land (and some ocean even). This was introduced on the N64 iteration. It is mercifully kept in this game.

One thing that the N64 version got right is recovery from a crash. If you crash, you get placed back on the road after a moment so you can continue on with the race. It replaces the annoying element of having your riders run endlessly towards the bike, making the race a lost cause half the time. This game reverts back to the old style. So, if you crash, the chances of winning any race diminishes greatly. In fact, if you wipe out in the latter half of the race, the race almost becomes a writeoff in the end because there is just no way for you to make it back to your bike before losing too much time. The only exception is, maybe, if your rider lands right next to your bike. Not something you can count on by any means, unfortunately.

One thing this game does improve on is the Five-O mode. Introduced in the N64 game, this game manages to turn this into a small campaign mode in and of itself. This development gets a thumbs up from me because it always seemed like a mode that deserved more in the previous game.

Generally speaking, this game represents a few steps forward and many steps back. A lot of features that made this series a great one have been stripped out. In fact, one of the features that was improved on in the N64 game have been reverted back to the old annoying and archaic way (namely the crashing respawn system). While this game does retain some of the entertaining elements that made this series such a great one to play, this game wound up being a disappointment.

Overall, this was one of those games I was excited for coming in. I was ultimately disappointed by what I played. This is in the context on how much I enjoyed so many other games in this series. So many features that made the previous games so great were ultimately stripped out. This includes features that were a staple since the very beginning (namely the store). The collectibles were greatly dumbed down and one of the most annoying features that I thought was removed made a return (running to your bike after a crash). The graphics are pretty average for a game of its time, but the audio is pretty decent. An overall decent game, but nothing to get excited over.

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