Redout

Redout is a futuristic racer in the vein of F-Zero or Wipeout; featuring high-speed hover-cars, racing on floating/suspended tracks with twists, turns, loops, speed-boosters, and a few jumps.

I read there are 35 different tracks and 100 events which does seem a lot, especially when you need to replay the events because of the difficulty. The event menu was also flooded with DLC tracks which you may not own. You may think "Enhanced Edition" will have the DLC but it doesn't.

The graphics look a bit underwhelming compared to what I thought they were. There's some tracks that feature mountains in the background but they consist of a few flat polygons so it looks like it is straight out of Starwing/Starfox. Many foreground objects are quite flat, but with vibrant colours. The game does give an epilepsy warning and sometimes it can be a bit bright/neon. Some tracks can seem a bit messy especially when there's low visibility due to sharp elevation/loops, or when the track is transparent.

Initially, I chose a ship with high structure since these games sometimes end up being tricky to handle and you ram into the sides or racers and explode, so I felt it was a safe choice. I seemed to finish 2 seconds behind Bronze in the time trials, and 4th out of 6 in the races. I saw I only needed 100 credits to buy a different ship so I went to replay the 1st event. The tip that popped up on the loading screen was along the lines of "you can boost at the expense of your energy". So I replay the events with my new knowledge of boosting, and either finish 1st/gold, or only just miss out and finish 2nd. I did notice that you often get overtaken on the last stretch. Not sure if the CPU is cheating or maybe you just need to remember to boost since there's no use for your energy when the race is over.

When I started playing the Class 2 races , I was then 10-20 seconds behind in last place. I max out some weapon upgrades, practice strafing - which then allowed me to progress a few more events, but then soon struggled again. Many races there were 2 seconds between 1st and 4th so it is often quite tight. There can be around 4 second variance between 1st in one race and 1st when you repeat it, so there's a bit of luck involved there too.

What got me further was this tip from a user on Steam "Realise that for every ship you buy, you can buy four upgrades FOR THAT SHIP in the ship menu (not the power-up menu)." So initially, I didn't know about any upgrades, then I found the Weapon upgrades, but then I found that I can actually upgrade the ships! So from the start I was playing on a harder difficulty than I needed.

Health and energy are shown on the HUD, apart from when the game decides to remove it; I assume this is a bug. Your ship regenerates health if you go a sufficient period without hitting any walls. If you hit a wall, you will interrupt the regen. Your energy is regenerated when the accelerator is pressed; which is all the time. The boost is useful for getting back up to speed from a bad corner, or can also rescue you if you're flying short on a jump.

There's many different variations on the racing. There's racing with power-ups, without, "Boss" races chain multiple tracks together, elimination races, time trial, then a Score race which is more about your average performance rather than catching up at the end (you get a point score depending on your position per second, points for hitting the boosters, then a massive final point score based on actual finishing position).

The user interface is poor, using red for text then switching to yellow when you highlight, but then there is a 1 second transition for the unselected item. So it looks like there's 2 items highlighted at once. The race menu also uses a small triangle next to the item which is highlighted when selected; I often looked for this to work out what was actually selected. Furthermore the controller was very sensitive so sometimes jumped multiple options. The upgrade menu has two sides, Active and Passive and it is hard to see which is selected because it relies on a slight skew/tilt.

The controls are a bit awkward because it seems mandatory to use the right analog stick to tilt to help go around corners, but then you also need to boost a lot which uses the A button. I switched to allow RT/LT to tilt but still felt awkward when needing to use LB to boost. You can only use some preset configurations rather than being able to configure yourself.

I found some of the jumps hard to judge the landing. Sometimes you think the momentum will carry you onto the track but its almost like the track moves under you and you plummet to your death. Falling off the track is a major mistake especially on the harder tracks because you will lose positions and it is difficult to catch up.

When you respawn, the game seems to want to autopilot for the first second but it often wiggles your vehicle then points you off-centre. There are some tracks where you will respawn then instantly fall off the track. There are also moments where you won't be able to get enough speed before the jump so there's definitely some unfair respawns.

I felt Redout was on the unfair side, and I think it needs extra tweaks to the UI and usability.