We've hit the mid-point of the week and the see-saw of time is about to tip forward and hurtle us towards the weekend at an alarming rate. Perhaps more ominously, we will also be hurtling towards the litany of PC gaming Black Friday deals that are headed our way in a fortnight's time.
Before then, however, the deals aren't slowing down one bit and there's another big batch of digital deals to check out right here, right now. Everything from this week's release of Nioh to Cities Skylines and even the absolute gem that is Jagged Alliance 2 is represented across a variety of sites, so consider this a convenient mid-week digital deals roundup if you like. Let's get to it, shall we?
]]>HIT HIM WITH THE CHAIN. Nothing else mattered. HAHA I HIT HIM WITH THE CHAIN. No-one cared about winning the race. THE CHAIN THE CHAIN HIT EACH OTHER WITH THE CHAIN ALL THE TIME THE CHAIN. This was the experience of trekking to the local games shop every school lunchtime, and paying the very obviously child-hating storekeeper 25p for a ten minute go on a Sega Mega Drive running Road Rash. It's a motorbike racing game, but really it's about hitting people in the face with chains. Road Redemption [official site], a spiritual sequel Kickstarted back in 2013, has spent the past 18 months promising it's about to leave Steam Early access, and now, finally, it has. The chain is mine once again.
Actually, I think I prefer the spade now.
]]>Road Rash-y fight-o-bike-a-racer Road Redemption's [official site] exit from Early Access has been delayed again, this time for a reason that's somewhat out of the makers' hands. Dark Seas are based in Louisiana, see, which is currently facing catastrophic flooding. Making a video game is obviously not their top priority right now, so they're pushing Road Redemption back from its previously-announced October 15 launch date until at least November. Which, yeah, fair enough.
]]>I know some folks love their jobs so much they playing games recreating 'em - such as truckers, farmers, and pilots - but I'm not one of them. After a long, tiring day, I want to park my hog, slip out my leathers, put my whippin' chain in a tub of oil (take care of your tools!), and get away from the violent world of illegal motorbike street racing. But while I've obviously not played Road Redemption [official site] myself, I have heard good things about the crowdfunded Road Rash 'em up. Now the devs have announced that, after two years on Early Access, it'll properly launch on October 15th.
]]>Road Redemption [official site] is expected to finally leave Early Access and properly launch by the end of summer, say DarkSeas Games. Back in 2013, they took their pitch for a Road Rash-style motorbike fight-o-racing game to Kickstarter, then they bopped it on over to Steam Early Access in 2014, and now they say it's a few updates away from properly launch. It'll be a while before the first of those hits, though.
]]>Road Redemption is a newcomer in the world of motorbike gangs. It probably has Road Rash tattooed somewhere on its body but it isn't directly descended from the bandanna-clad grandaddy of motorcycle combat games. Or, if it is, the mean ol' bastard won't acknowledge it, so it has a name of its own. Alec has already taken to the asphalt, putting a youth of BMX stunt riding to good use, and the game is now available, albeit in Early Access form. There's undoubtedly a launch video on Steam but I'm going to show you what happened when Mr Meer rode his bike through a carstorm instead. A carstorm is a meteorological event in which calls fall out of the sky.
]]>"What's the point of remaking games?" is a familiar question. The answers can be similarly rote: "modern values", "the audience demanded it", "publishers abandoned the genre prematurely." Road Redemption, which is '90s motorbikes'n'baseball bats hit Road Rash by any other name, offers a stronger answer: "physics." The physics of rending metal and the physics of plummeting bodies.
]]>Road Rash spiritual successor Road Redemption wants it all, and it wants it now over a long period of time in which it will slowly but surely build out its feature list, eventually culminating in an open, procedural United States full of gangs, vehicular mayhem, and presumably roads. For now, however, you can scream down a desert highway while bludgeoning men with shovels and the like. The American dream, in other words, if you're a lunatic or a very frustrated gardener.
It's been eight months since we checked in to see just how convincingly spiritual Road Rash sequel Road Redemption was smacking people in the face with a chain at 100MPH. Successfully Kickstarted last May, it's recently stuck a helmeted head above the parapet to show off a current build. It looks somewhat as one might expect/hope - a 16-bit ethos transposed to 21st century tech with something of a Mad Max aesthetic.
'Redemption' does seem a somewhat inappropriate word to include in the name of a game that's basically about causing people grievous bodily harm in order to win a motorbike race, but perhaps these riders were even more terrible people before they adopted that as a hobby.
]]>Redemption. Usually, it's synonymous with some form of return, comeback, or newfound evidence of worth. It'd have been kind of a shame (in a bizarre, cosmic kind of way), then, if something called Road Redemption crashed and burned before it even crossed the starting line. Fortunately, the Road Rash spiritual successor ended its funding drive with a respectable $173,803, putting it ever-so-slightly beyond its $160,000 goal. Soon, there will be much katana jousting and celebratory roadkill feasting. But first: Steam and, you know, actually finishing the game.
]]>EA may not be making the most, erm, popular calls these days, but in terms of sheer quantity of beloved classics, you certainly can't take a motorcycle-propelled sledgehammer to its accomplishments. That last bit, however, is the exact premise of Road Rash, a largely console-based illegal bike racing classic that stole the hearts of starry eyed youths and - as unbiased science has proven - transformed them into vicious brigands and/or motorcycles. Failed reboots and false starts, however, have left the series to the ravages of time, which is basically the saddest thing. But now, hope's arrived on a gleaming two-wheeled steed. Introducing Road Redemption, a spiritual successor from a bunch of former Road Rash devs industry vets who did not actually develop other Road Rashes. Now, rashes of the non-Road variety? I can't say for sure, and I don't think I want to know.
