UGO: Former Rockstar Vienna developers--now known as Deep Silver--have quite the project in their mitts. The studio that served its time on the GTA franchise has finally pieced together an open-world game of its own, and it's surprisingly unlike much of anything we've seen in the genre before. Well, at least the setting is.
Set in Vietnam era US, Ride to Hell is the Easy Rider of videogames. Or maybe it's something more akin to Born Losers or any of the other "Billy Jack" biker films that ranked of the B-movie caliber. Either way, the Sex, Drugs, & Rock n' Roll culture practically drips from the early demo I saw at the press event out in Joshua Tree, California (one of the birthplaces of biker culture). And it's easy to see that there's one huge difference between Ride to Hell and the bucketful of other sandbox games available: you're not stuck in the big city. And surprisingly, that small difference begets a fairly large tonal shift for the game.
Jake Conway, fresh out of the army and a Vietnam vet, returns to his home town of Dead End to find his kid brother rocking their father’s biker gang vest and trying to be cool. It only takes about ten seconds for a rival gang, The Devil’s Hand, to take interest and cut him up. Cue a pathetic tale of revenge that is to scattered, pointless and thin the only analogy I can come up with is confetti.It’s like confetti.
There isn’t one main problem; the entire plot seems problematic. The characters are either so poorly written it’s impossible to care or they are just plain repulsive. Jake is a dumb brick shithouse with about as much personality as a doorstop. When you aggressively want your lead character to shut up every time he opens his mouth, there’s something wrong. Mack, the obligatory Krist Kristofferson-like older father figure, is equally boorish, grumbling through line after line of exposition.
Ride to Hell: Retribution appears on Xbox site with more info and pictures.
Player Attack: While we're not sure what's different about it, mysterious title Ride to Hell: Retribution has been re-classified in Australia, given a new codename: Cook's Mad Recipe. Whatever you want to call it, this upcoming, open-world story of a returning Vietnam veteran looks set to be Australia's first R-rated game featuring "high impact sexual references".
i will buy it the day it launches.