Rocky Ride

Rocky Ride is an interesting 3D sports buggy racing game where the tracks are huge suspended aerial pathways with sweeping curves, corkscrews and vertical loops. This was a real serious attempt at developing a game and it's not the worst thing I've seen as far as these kinds of games go. The graphics are pretty good, there's a simple upgrade system for your car (you can increase handling, speed, acceleration). There's quite a few tracks. The game works in 4K and has a few tweaking options, so it's meeting the minimum standard expectation for a modern PC game. The down side... the graphics look a bit like they're from 2005, not 2020. There's only one set of assets so all the tracks look the same. There's only one kind of car. The gameplay and controls are pretty poor... to the point the developer put a shortcut "R" to reset your position of the track. That's how bad the controls are (you'd hope they would fix the controls instead of that kind of stop-gap!). Also, it's pretty buggy, the game crashed for me when trying to start the second race. This really isn't very good, but kudos to the developer for trying instead of pumping out a Unity asset flip or something garba…

I think the initial test race has you using an upgraded buggy because the following races the controllability of the vehicle was much better. That said the controllability is still extremely difficult at times. A racing game with buggies sounds like it'd be fun but the controllability is a huge factor here and this game just doesn't provide it.

Important bit: I enjoyed playing Rocky Ride The game consists of racing tracks to get trophies, gold or otherwise. You also win money for good race finish position, and pick up coins and get coins for knocking other contestants off the track. You get to choose whether to spend coins on speed, acceleration or handling. The controls are so-so, the car control gets better once you've upgraded it via spending the coins earned. Story: No story. Graphics: I hope you like bloom and over-saturation! Sound: It has sound, it does the job, a bit repetitive but not annoyingly so. I got this in a bundle but I'd say it's ok for the price if you like old-school arcade racers.

There is some aspects to improve upon this game. I would like to firmly criticise the controls first. The grip and stability control are big problems with the game, and even at max control you still struggle to keep the car on four wheels. It's important that it needs a change to address that. I propose that it would've been better if you've scrapped the upgrade system entirely and just focused on the racing part (along with some simple car stability improvements [not flipping over, not overturing, not going off the track whenever there is an uphill turn followed by a sharp flat and etcetera]). As regards to the racing part: There are arguably too many cars and a pileup is mostly unavoidable during races due to the AI trying to keep themselves in one racing line, and in turn interfering with the player's current position. The best way I can think of fixing this is to generate a unique racing line for each driver that they follow and incorporate a simple collision avoidance into their programming. The last feature that should be noted in causing unfair difficulty is the camera itself. While the other points should be addressed as fast as possible, I will give more leniency for th…

Rocky Ride Positives: + Cool concept + Ok graphics + Upgrades + Powerups + Cool and nice tracks with beautiful landscapes Negatives: - The most horrible handling I have ever encountered in a racing game - Feels like only 2 wheels are touching the track when steering - Weird physics - Upgrading makes almost no difference to the bad handling - Adjusting control sensitivity does not help enough (ended up with 65%, but it was still bad) - Only one car - Lots of aliasing - Bad collisions - You get stuck in your opponents all the time - If you drive out of the track once or twice, youll likely end up last (on the higher difficulty) - Respawn of the car can take you back in mid air, or in a steep turn - Respawn button takes too long to react - Very frustrating and unnessecary hard to play because of the above Had hopes that this game could take me back to the Dethkarz and Trust Twist'n Turn years. But it led me only frustrated over the bad controls and issues. The game has potential, but it needs a whole lot of work. And before that is done, skip this one. Total Score: 3.5/10

Low budget but fun.