Review #262: Ride to Hell: Retribution

 This game is a joke.

 Full disclosure: I knew exactly what I was getting into when I bought this game, but hey, five bucks. FIVE BUCKS! In case you have been living under a rock, Ride to Hell is an infamously terrible game, featuring bugs galore and awkward fully-clothed sex scenes.

 The story has you playing as this guy named Jake, who is back from the military, and soon his brother is killed and he is left for dead, but somehow, he survives and now he is out for revenge. This is the thing, I can see what they were going for, a gritty motorbike soap opera, probably inspired by Sons of Anarchy. I can see it, their heart was in the right place... kindaish, but the execution is laughable. Voice acting is terrible, cutscenes lack music and sometimes even sound effects. The story moves at a very haphazard way, sometimes the way one scene moves into the next just makes no sense, women drop their panties(figuratively, since, y'know, fully clothed sex scenes) after you beat up their assailants and just have sex with Jake on the very same room the baddies are laying over their own blood. It's a mediocre story, with terrible characters and poor logic behind their actions.

 There's two different gameplay types: Third person action and motorbike scenes, but they have one thing in common: absolutely wonky hitboxes. Combat allows for hand-to-hand affairs, which end up in tedium, or you can just use guns. While enemies are bullet sponges, if you master the art of the headshot, you can just cruise through the game, and this is my advised method for getting through the game: Headshot them bastards! Whether you choose to go the slow and repetitive way and fight your way through the game, or choose the fast, but equally repetitive and dull, headshot tactic, it doesn't matter, because the game feels dull and lifeless. It simply isn't any fun. Then there's the motorbike segments, on-wheels combat consists on mashing whatever button the game tells you to mash when you are approached by enemies, and pressing triangle at the right times to go below certain obstacles, but you'd better press it early, or else the game will assume you hit the object, even if it didn't even touch your head.

 That's not to say that the game lacks any positives... for instance, the bike customization is rather in-depth, even if the customization only affects the look of your bike. And hey, the first few times, landing headshots feels rather satisfying, as the game slows down while a crunchy 'splash' sounds and  fountain of blood comes out of their faces.... at least the first ten times. There's also the soundtrack, which kinda decent... at times.

 Buggy, unfinished, ugly, stupid... all of them are valid when it comes to describing this game, but the game is almost at the 'so bad it's good' range, for less than five bucks, I dare say that it's worth it just to see how bad it is. Because, as bad as the game is, it's playable, it's functional... it just isn't any good.
2.5 out of 10