Road Rash 3-D

Four groups of motorcycle maniacs, the Cafe-boys, the Techgeists, the DeSades, and the Dewleys are organizing illegal races in their different ''territories''. You are one of these maniacs, and with the help of weapons, you try to win every race in order to get money for your new bike.

Graphics: 7

Racetrack/background-design: 6 All the tracks are very cool and challenging, but graphically they are not that good. The backgrounds are also very nice, but they seem all to be too colourful, and pixelated. Even when you adjust the colours of your TV, they seem to be too bright in contrast to the vehicles. Well, maybe this is only my personal opinion. Nevertheless the backgrounds are all very simple-designed. Some landscapes seem too standard-like. Also the buildings are quite bad designed, with nearly no details. Especially during races through cities you will see this. Even at that time the PlayStation would have been capable of more detailed and sharp backgrounds. Well, during the later levels you will not concentrate this much on the buildings standing beside the racetrack, but especially in the first level, you'll look often to the side. Motorcycle/rider-design: 8 All the bikes and riders are very well done. Especially their movements seem to be very realistic. You, for example, turn around when there's another rider directly behind you. Also really cool is when you are flying against a wall with 300km/h. Well, actually you would be dead then, but in RoadRash you seem to stick on the wall for a moment, before you fall to the ground. Funny.

Sound: 8

Music: 9 EA hired many famous musicians like Kid Rock or Sugar Ray for the soundtrack of this game. Most of the songs fit perfectly to the racing excitement, so you won't turn down the music volume - if you like rock music. SFX: 7 Roaring machines, squealing tires, some voice samples. Nothing special, but well done (my standard phrase :-) )

Gameplay: 8

I must confess that I'm riding a motorcycle myself, so not everyone will agree with my rating. But I always loved it to race with ultra fast high tech bikes, kicking down the enemy with my feet, chains, or electro-shockers (like in real life - just kidding). RoadRash has three modes: TimeTrial, BigGame, and hmmm.. don't know the other one. Actually the only important mode is the ''Big game''. Before you start you select the beginner-bike of one of the four groups. Then you can select between two or three different routes, then you start. You are always starting as the last of 20 (I think) riders. Actually the 10 riders in front of you are easy to overtake. But the leading bastards will begin to kick you down either with their fists/feet or with special weapons. By attacking someone with your fist, you have the chance to steal his weapon if he is attacking you at the same time. So you can grab, chains, baseball-bats, jimmies, electro-shockers, ... really cool. You have a small ''HP-bar'', and if you have received enough damage, you will fall down your bike, and therefore loosing much time/places. By falling down too much, your bike will turn to scrap with time (but this nearly never happens). And, by falling down you risk to be busted by an officer. Then your race is over and you have to pay your ticket. Your goal is it to finish each ! race at least in 3rd place - and there are many races per season. When you finished all the races you will be promoted into the next level, where you are able to buy a new/stronger motorcycle provided that you have collected enough money. The races are all very quick, and especially in the third level they nearly become too fast. So if you want to beat the last level you will have to do much practicing. So in the later levels you won't be able to use your weapons, because everything is too fast, that you have to concentrate on the racetrack.

Presentation: 10

There's a very cool intro, and during the game you will be able to watch many small, well done films. They all show the different clans. So the Cafe-racers have their leather-suits and colourful Japanese super-bikes, the Techgeists are riding high-tech ducati-like street-bikes, the weird DeSades have their S/M-style leather suits and their brutal Streetfighters, and finally there are the Harley driving Dewleys. In all the movies you will see a small scene that shows something about them. And before every race you are hearing a small dialogue/monologue of one of the actors about racing - really funny. So you will soon recognize the voices of the speakers as the guys from the films. Well well done. I like these cool weirdos.

Final Score: 8

O.K., there are flaws in the graphic, and the game becomes too hard in the later levels. But in my opinion this is a really good motorcycle-action-racer, with cool a presentation. So if you like motorcycles, cool guys beating themselves with chains during driving with 300 km/h and rock music, then this is your PSX-game.

(Credits to alchief)