ride to hell retribution is a video game
developed by you technics limited and
published by
deep silver for the playstation 3 xbox
360 and pc
in 2013. ah but our story doesn't start
in 2013. let's roll back the clock a few
years to when the game was first
announced
in 2008. back then ign was one of the
first outlets to report on the project
which was going by the title of
ride to hell according to the game's
trailer and the ign interview the
project was set to take place in the
1960s featuring a non-linear story
and a huge open world to traverse the
game was originally conceived to feature
95 square kilometers of explorable world
that's bigger than grand theft auto 5's
map that's pretty big
and this spread out big bad world it
would focus on bikers and the 60s
counterculture movement taking
inspiration from classic films like easy
rider they also promised an enormously
customizable bike
over 300 licensed songs from the 60s
expandable gang territory and
tons of different vehicles to ride the
game was slated for a 2009 release but
unfortunately that window came and went
with no word on a street date this led
many to believe that ride to hell was
silently being scrapped
but it wasn't and although the game was
showcased every so often
a firm release date was nowhere in sight
for a long while
that is until about five years after its
initial reveal when we got a brand new
trailer
this trailer announced a june 2013
release and that wasn't the only news
turns out the game was no longer called
ride to hell it was now
ride to hell retribution we also got a
glimpse of main character jake conway
single-handedly tearing up a bar this
guy seems like a bad enough dude in a
world where guys without machete
suddenly have machetes and pool dancers
materialize submachine guns from burlap
sacks
you gotta be but hold on this is just a
pre-rendered cinematic trailer how does
the final game
actually look and play did the devs
manage to deliver on the many promises
they made pre-release
just one way to find out let's rev up
the 360 disc drive and
let's rev up the 360 disc drive and
motor down the nearest mountain pass
with ride to hell
retribution the game begins with our
protagonist riding his bike on the
highway apparently this wasn't
exciting enough for the intro because we
immediately jumped to the same character
working a mounted turret
we're not sure why we've been jumped to
this moment without explanation
maybe it's some kind of tutorial i'm as
lost as you are but we mow down enemies
anyway at least
i hope they're enemies at this point the
only world building we've had is
right boot on pedal eat lead suckers
are we back on the highway now wait i'm
confused
how did we get here whoa whoa it
happened again
where are we who are you why are we
fighting
another jump cut wow it happened so fast
that the black twizzlers on this guy's
shirt are having a fit
do you think this is it i'm the last one
holy [ __ ] black licorice you either love
it
or back to the bike
her character seems to have veered off
the road during his last manic episode
you know
my papi always said it's times like
these that you need to just stop
everything you're doing
take a couple deep breaths and do a [ __ ]
jump over a helicopter
title card well that was a very
confusing and bizarre
minute and a half luckily we finally get
a nugget of the game's plot
from a loading screen i mean where else
could you have put about a minute and a
half of backstory or context
our protagonist jake is trying to
connect with his brother mikey and uncle
mac
after serving in the vietnam war post
load screen we jump back in time
10 days jake seems to be getting
discharged from the military
yep looks like jinky boy is all ready to
get back to humdrum civilian life
jake on your feet it's time
no need to keep him around a bit longer
to decompress
jake meets up with his family his
brother mikey's raring to get out and
see some local bands with jake but mack
hates the idea saying it's not safe in
their neck of the woods and that people
get killed
over nothing upset mikey takes off with
max
bike who now charges us with bringing
him back safely this brings us to the
game's first
actual non-tutorial gameplay chasing
down mikey and with it
we get problems this section is super
dark
so dark that you can barely make out
jake he ends up looking like a floating
silhouette
directly in front of the screen he's
unlit even when he drives around a light
source
like he's an untextured model like a
shadow
steering feels floaty easily
overshooting the direction you want to
point in this means you'll be meeting
obstacles head on
when you collide with something it
screws up the speed and control of your
bike
in completely unrealistic ways and if
you hit something in a way that the game
can't properly register
it resets your position sometimes this
can lead to a game over
other times it's just completely
disorienting
so putting it bluntly flowing through
the streets and ride to hell
is a bad time we're not exactly off to a
great start in a game focused
entirely on motorcycle culture we catch
up to mikey and have a brotherly chat on
the side of the road
mikey talks about a girl he might like
and wait
does that poster say can it be for
president ah yes
john f solid kenneby 35th president of
the united states and master of tactical
espionage
anyway jake goes to a restaurant across
the street to grab some grub when he
does
mikey's accosted by a gang their weapon
of choice terrible facial animations and
awkward silences
jake tries to deflate the situation when
a gang member named colt
recognizes mikey's vest colt looks
familiar black licorice
well we know this guy's gonna die colt
recognizes mikey's vest and the game
suddenly tosses the two brothers on a
motorbike without warning guess we're
playing now
clearly we're missing a scene here was
there some kind of altercation with the
awkward silence quartet
did mikey leave max bike on the street
why are the brothers on a single
motorcycle
now i don't know but jake thinks the
guys they're running from are part of a
gang called the devil's hand
they do not like mikey's biker vest
which was passed down from the brother's
deceased father
you know what i don't like this
motorcycle gameplay
throughout your time with ride to hell
all the bike sequences control
about as terribly as the first the only
difference is that every once in a while
slightly new mechanics are added which
typically make
things worse for example not only do you
need to drive and avoid objects here but
you need to fight off rival bikers
using quicktime inputs let's make this
clear up front
the quicktime sequences are totally
broken like here we didn't even push the
button it
asked us to push and it didn't matter
the enemy just shrugged drove
off and blew themselves up well i don't
know how to ride a motorbike
eventually we make it through this
intense action sequence by
not pressing a single attack button and
suddenly jake and mikey are surrounded
again colt asks about mikey's vest as i
was asking before
we want to know where the boy here got
his cut from
would be nice to know who you are it's
nobody's it's just a jacket
look lad this is the part where you beg
for his life
you understand
[Music]
he's just a kid there was a lot of blood
when that cold guy bashed in your
brother's face
jake think maybe you could uh show a
little bit more compassion
he's just a kid mikey tells the crew
that the vest belonged to his dad and
the gang keep pressing him to give them
a name if only there was some way to
figure out the vest's previous owner
with
regular old perception mikey lets the
obvious cat out of the never sealed bag
and reveals that his and jake's father
was an infamous biker named toledo
conway
this doesn't go well
what happens next doesn't really make a
bunch of sense
we hear an explosion and see bursts from
an assault rifle we assume it's being
pointed at jake
all of this in dramatic black and white
well guess
jake's dead but nope we quickly flashed
a color in the same location
jake now has his dad's vest on this
scene is layered over with the ghostly
voice of uncle mac you're gonna wind up
dead you ain't even healed from that
bullet you took
well it's nothing mac
mikey's gone
and i'm gonna hunt down every one of
those animals jake gets on his bike and
drives off
for retribution get it it's it's the
name but i'm confused how did jake get
away from the devil's hand
didn't they just point blank shoot him
with an assault rifle was he left for
dead but recovered
how much time has passed keep these
questions in mind folks we'll be getting
back to them off seeking
retribution jake is once again riding
his dumb bike
here we get to learn a new driving
mechanic powersliding
the idea is that there will be times
where an obstacle will block your path
when that happens
you press y to make jake slide under
conveniently placed gaps
so that you can keep on motoring jake
power slides like this
if that looks stupid it's because it's
stupid poor hit detection and terrible
bike controls ruin whatever fun this
move was supposed to ignite your bike
consistently moves forward with no way
to stop you can't
even turn if you bump into an object the
game fades to black and places you back
on the road which is
really annoying you can't help but
collide with objects because of the way
your bike moves meaning that you will
constantly have your vehicle's position
reset
over and over at this point i'd say jake
should leave the terrible controlling
bike behind and try seeking revenge on
foot
but guess what the hand-to-hand combat
in this game
is somehow worse during the early
sections a ride to hell you're gonna run
into fights with
tons of random cronies they somehow made
fights incredibly mundane
here keep tapping the attack button
watching jake snap
and slide around until it's over
throughout these bouts you'll meet
characters that jake
questions to find those responsible for
mikey's death and once he's done
questioning them
he brutally murders them every single
time eventually jake's pointed to san
alfonso a city where he needs to find
someone named carlos so that he can
continue
his trail of destruction after all the
linearity the game's offered so far does
this mean
we finally get a taste of that amazing
open world gameplay we were promised
back in 2008
no to our horror we discovered that once
you get to the big city you can't
actually go anywhere you want
if you move somewhere that the game
considers out of bounds guess what
happens
your position is reset just like when
you're on your freaking motorcycle
an open world experience designed with a
map that was supposed to be one of the
largest ever
well at some point in development that
got cut each level
is linear you move from the start of a
location to the end
there is virtually no exploration at all
you just move on forward until you have
to
bust some heads and then keep moving
forward but once in a while
you come across special events like this
guy screaming at a lady in a parking lot
charming the moment the guy gets knocked
out this happens
great did the game crash oh no no
it didn't okay are they
it can't be everyone involved in this uh
adult themed event
is fully clothed pants come on youtube
calm down
you're gonna wear out the crotch on your
levi's what is this room
are we in a hotel now probably not do
hotels have random personal pictures of
people in them
mom this looks stupid and it is stupid
almost as quickly as it happened the
game snaps back to the parking lot and
the girl is nowhere in sight
poor gal's a pile of friction dust on a
duvet somewhere
was that story related did jake know
this person
why did they instantly agree to teleport
to some skeezy room to play
pants on slip and slide the answer to
these questions
is utterly insulting yeah you're gonna
run into not just one but multiple women
sometimes groups of women that are
activated
after completing a task like this and
instantaneously you'll be transported to
one of these cutscenes
apparently jake likes his companions
like the creators of ride to hell like
their motorcycle games
completely devoid of pleasure so why is
this happening
well you know good old video game health
and ammo pickups
usually appearing as a first aid kit or
stack of ammo
well folks you're looking at them in
ride to hell retribution the women jake
wooz without taking off his shoes
are ammo and health crates not
making this up it's written directly
into the tutorial section of the game
after every raunchy scene you're
transported back to gameplay with full
health
and ammo this by the way is pointless
because enemies constantly drop ammo and
your health replenishes over time the
developers likely wanted these scenes to
convey the
adult nature of the game and what's more
adult than bodyboinking
yeah but they clearly had no idea what
they were doing it's like someone walked
into the game
director's office and asked how exactly
should we implement this
into the game
after our initial parking lot pickup
jake enters another biking sequence
this time they've introduced switchable
blunt weapons great
unfortunately they forgot to animate
them being used properly
that's it jake mime exactly how you're
gonna beat that guy up
showed him regardless of who you pummel
on bike when they tumble off the bike
always flies off at top speed and blows
up
ooh like fireworks you chase one of the
main rival bikers down but he drives
into a brewery
and locks himself inside obviously
flustered and brain dead from monotonous
gameplay
jake asks a nearby mechanic for help
instead of easily breaking his way into
the building the mechanic says
her deadbeat ex-husband has the keys to
the brewery so you ride with her to find
him repeating the exact same gameplay
you just crawled out from
you find her ex-husband who the [ __ ] are
you supposed to be
you beat up her ex-husband the mechanic
shows her appreciation by aggressively
jumping on jake
clearly frustrated by her inability to
understand how overalls work
before you head back to the brewery matt
calls and says you need guns
you find a guy who sells guns says he
won't sell guns to just anyone now you
get a training sequence to prove
you can use guns these side quests
really feel like remnants of what the
open world version of ride to hell was
supposed to be
unfortunately where some of these events
feel like they should be optional off
the beaten path missions you have to
linearly complete
everything this game screams incomplete
experience stapled together
we've got animations that seem to make
sense at first but
clearly don't like this gentleman who we
assume is supposed to be wiping a gun
down with a cloth
instead he's just hovering his bare hand
above the gun and
moving it around maybe he's casting a
spell
even when it comes to general audio
things seem lacking
or incomplete like these two awkwardly
motioning in front of each other not
speaking a word
maybe they both cast silence spells on
one another
so okay we're finally able to get in the
brewery and we have a gun that should
make combat sequences a breeze to finish
right
nope it's mystifying that a game like
this can be so broken
on so many levels even the gun plays
borked apparently people in this
universe
are mostly bulletproof unless you
perform a perfect headshot
yeah usually doesn't always work you
might choose to go back to hand-to-hand
combat every so often to break up the
monotony and if you do you'll eventually
power
up jake enough that he will have a
special move triggered by a quicktime
sequence this will take out your
adversary sure but it also adds more
time to each encounter it's strange
this game feels like it goes out of its
way to test your patience
it just when you think they couldn't
make this game any longer
a jason voorhees knockoff enters
complete with hockey mask who will
not go down headshots
don't work here no now the plastic's
almost immune convenient while shooting
him directly in the face he will
continue to attack you like nothing's
happening
the first time you meet him oh you'll
die
you can bet on it he's unceremoniously
tossed at you without warning you'll
accidentally treat him like a regular
thug and get your lights knocked out
super quick
and when that happens you'll respond way
off from where you were
oh and all the enemies you fought up
until that point respawned
ready for another go i'd rather chew
decades-old expired milk than keep
playing this game
but push forward we must we went through
the entire building taking on more
enemies and more
jason's and well the guy we were chasing
ran away
he he what he ran away then that whole
battle through a massive factory
and he just ran away yep then jake meets
up with his uncle mack who
hasn't quite finished rendering in but
when he does
ride to hell morphs into another game
genre on rail shooter
while mack handles driving jake has to
take out moving targets
and you better do it quickly otherwise
mack will get shot and
well eventually we catch up to the jerk
we've been chasing for what feels like
decades and finally take him out we can
only
hope the game is out of surprises for us
that's a false hope who are we kidding
at this point we're a couple hours into
ride to health and we've entered what
can only be described as
a hub world this place is called dead
end
and it really lives up to the name it's
jake's hometown
it kind of feels like a dump you can't
venture too far because as you'd guess
the game resets your position if you do
there are two stores here that you can
shop in
one that buys drugs from jake which are
looted from enemies and one that sells
weapons
there is no complexity in selling your
illicit substances
you basically just sell everything you
got but at the gun shop things
feel a little less straightforward see
we think you were supposed
to slowly progress and buy more powerful
equipment in the game's original design
but there are weapons pre-unlocked like
the model 9 here which has
higher ratings than the other guns you
have yet to buy
why would you purchase something worse
than what you already have for free
the confusing design decisions know no
bounds and hey most confusing of all
where are all the other things we were
promised while this game was being
showcased
fine we don't have a huge open world to
explore but where's the soundtrack made
up of hundreds of songs from the 60s
where's the expandable
gang territory where are the abundance
of vehicles we could drive did they
deliver on anything they promised sure
they did
what really yeah bike customization take
your wild hog and modify away
change wheels colors seats handles
you've got tons of options with items
that unlock as you progress through the
game these cosmetics don't modify
gameplay but at least you can ride your
hot pink
rainbow printed bike to your heart's
content while we could praise this
feature for its well laid out
presentation and ease of use
that gets thrown out the window almost
immediately while customizing
we suffered multiple crashes on the xbox
360 that forced
us to hard reset the console seems that
this one decent feature of ride to hell
should be avoided at all costs unless
you want to risk damaging your game save
or potentially your console if your
console
and your brain have survived this far
then jake joins a fight club one of the
people who killed his bro happens to be
involved here
time to tussle let's kick it kick chick
chick chitch chit chick chitch kitch
kick kick kick kick
kick kick kick kick kick kick
kick wow is he gonna stop any time soon
ah no it doesn't look like it well
all the fights can't be like this right
looky here this is the guy who slit
mikey's throat his name's mead hook
and he loves to talk which one of you
put money on this do you really think
he's got a
chance against me this terrified little
thing
that you see before yours is nothing
eventually jake kicks meat hook down for
good he starts to question him but
someone rushes up and finishes him off
before
jake gets answers the story continues
with jake
back on his motorcycle oh good looks
like he's being rendered on a ps1
kind of looks more like an n64 by this
point the plot
shifts to jake pestering nobodies who
always refuse to help him unless he does
something for them
first gameplay filler isn't this fun
here jake's tasked with delivering a
package on his bike
when what just what we restart the level
to try it again
and i can't i just
you're telling me they had a level flaw
in the game that was
this obvious and they didn't fix it
incredible how can you miss this the
bike literally falls through the level
every time to get this blundering mess
of code and hot garbage to run
properly we figured out what you need to
do drive
up to the massive hole in the road slow
down
and wait wait for the level to load
sweet merciful crap we shouldn't need to
explain what loading screens are for
right okay then here this this is what
loading screens are for
to load the thing you will be
interacting with
if this game was a pizza it would have
been delivered as a raw dough in a wet
sock
back to more bike action now we can use
terrible gun mechanics while we use
terrible driving mechanics
and in slow motion the game gets locked
in the shooting mode you can't speed up
and the slow motion is permanent until
you take out all your targets
this would be fine if the people you
were shooting at weren't the size of
ants in the distance
but the vehicular of nuttiness doesn't
stop there
folks jake needs to get into some
special secret property on the other
side of this electric
fence i hope you know what you're doing
don't
touch the fence jake decides to walk
across the street to politely borrow a
tanker
just kidding jake murders innocent
truckers and steals their ride hero of
the story everyone
well clearly he's stolen the truck to
bash through the electric fence
quick and easy not quite oh jake drives
the truck through the roads destroying
countless police barriers murdering
legions of people on the street
eventually he crashes the truck into an
electric power dam
he then brutally slaughters more
innocent bystanders working at the dam
pulls out a piece and shoots the truck's
attached gas tank which makes the entire
complex
explode this likely incinerates any
other living thing
in the vicinity while he dives into a
river unscathed
is jake the bad guy yes jake
is the [ __ ] bad guy but hey now we
can hop
over the freshly unelectrified fence who
wrote
this who laid all this out and convinced
a team of game designers that yes
this is probably his best course of
action in this given scenario
we're not gonna bore you with too many
details but rest assured jake does more
biking
more beating more fully clothed
we grind kick and scream our way through
this awful heap eventually
we make it to colt yes colt the guy who
killed
wait wait no he didn't kill mikey that
was meat hook
and he got the stab stab already do we
really need to keep retributioning never
mind
it has been foretold by the terribly
jumpy prophetic intro that we would
cross paths once more
ah but the sequence can play out a bit
differently than what we saw in the
beginning for example
after jake shoots one leg we can take
our time before
shooting the other one then you can
shoot him in the
twizzler and then the finisher wait for
it
wait for it wait for it just do it
already
done yes wait i just remembered
something
[Music]
rewind
this all of this happened in 10 days
jake returned from vietnam mikey was off
jake healed from being shot point blank
with an assault rifle jake tracked down
and pulverized every member of the
devil's hand responsible for mikey's
death and he did all that
in 10 days it took us more than 10 days
to make this video
this is craziness nothing about the
story makes any sense in the slide
oh wait why aren't the credits rolling
do you think this is it i'm the last
one because the game isn't
over what this is the midpoint of the
game we've only witnessed half of what
ride to hell has to offer
great it's revealed that the people who
killed mikey were
actually part of a much larger gang the
gang who killed jake and mikey's father
and the head of that gang put out a kill
order on their entire family so
now jake has to hunt more people down
joy
besides super boring story beats the
gameplay doesn't expand with many new
ideas
and every gameplay issue from the first
half is
right here in the second half plus you
get to throw knives
but a lot of good throwing knives will
do when the crystal lake
dumbass returns you can toss plenty of
knives in his head and he's just
cool with it combat while riding is just
as irritating as ever
in this part we're supposed to shoot a
guy named greasy steve off a bike
simple right but it's not it takes
several clips of ammunition with perfect
hits during slow motion to actually take
him out
look at this the guy would be a block a
swiss cheese by now he's leaking so much
bodily fluid that he looks like an
exploded hot pocket there's no way he's
alive after all this
problems like the soldiers momming to
each other from earlier on will they pop
up again
this time with the exact same model
the one on the left doesn't seem to be
casting a shadow but despite all of what
we've seen
closer to the end of the game they
attempt to throw a little more gameplay
variation into the mix
like threatening people with a gun and
with this we get what should have been a
five-minute gameplay sequence
that was stretched out and took us over
an hour to finish
this fellow in the white tank top we
need to question him so we get to use
the threatened mechanic
but first he runs away if he runs away
too fast
it's game over so you need to keep
running after him good luck though as
you encounter a ton
of random enemies and no you can't just
run past them you need to take them out
to continue forward
all the while you lose precious time all
of this
could be a fun challenge what the game's
threatened mechanic
it's busted you aim bullseye right in
the sky's face and he won't stop
at all yeah that red circle in the
middle of the screen
it needs to fill up completely otherwise
he's not threatened enough
and every time you move around even
slightly the circle resets
giving him time to dash away and hey
getting frustrated want to shoot him and
get this over with like we did
go ahead the game treats this as a fail
state
time to restart from the top we're so
sick
of these loops of gameplay that take
forever to complete and have you doing
the same thing over and over
give us something we've never seen
before
oh jesus what so many
glitches glitch glitch glitch
glitch glitch glitch
this game is so sloppy even the
interactive cutscenes
are a mess of glitches
i think he's probably dead now buddy you
don't know the half of it
we love this part where jake's eyes
adjust through the glitch
as if he's come to the horrific
realization that he may very well be the
villain here
hey look bad boy jake is back on his
bike again delivering something else to
who cares hopefully the level will
actually load in this time
yeah but no how how does this keep
happening just a few years before this
game came out we got the lost and damned
an expansion to grand theft auto 4. it
was all about a biker gang and it
doesn't have any of the aggravating
issues we're constantly seeing in ride
to hell
oh and it's open world while there were
some minor bugs with the lost and damned
those were eventually patched out
what you're seeing here with ride to
hell it never got fixed you'd probably
think the team behind retribution just
put their hands in the air and gave up
post-release but they didn't they
released follow-up dlc
oh come on who would be stupid enough to
give them more money
for more of this crap circus
no no no way there's no way we're doing
this there's no possible way
i'm gonna sit here and play through
cook's mad recipe is a story extension
dlc that adds about an hour and a half
of extra gameplay
to ride to hell retribution jake needs
to stop a stolen
atom bomb from being detonated by one of
the gang members who killed his dad
oh how does a story of this grand line
up with the rest of the game
it actually adds nothing to the game you
haven't already had the displeasure of
experiencing
besides a near useless sniper rifle in
the weapons roster with the worst
crosshair i've ever seen in a game
believe it or not this cooks mad recipe
dlc
is actually more unstable than the base
game
are we upside down yes we are
your controls are completely inverted
here making it impossible to do
much of anything and we believe so few
people actually played this trash heap
that virtually
nobody experienced this first hand that
must make us special dlc over back to
the main game we
burned through everything matt gets
killed mikey's
supposed girlfriend ellie shows up and
she apparently hates her father
turns out she is caesar's daughter who
is caesar
oh just the dude who killed jake's dad
and put out that hit on the whole family
we meet him almost 30 minutes before the
game's over we have
no connection with this person nothing
this brings us to the very end of the
game
ellie is on jake's bike and the two of
them are fighting off caesar
jake is suddenly wearing sunglasses when
he wasn't wearing them a moment earlier
he looks cool we begin a final quick
time event that needs to be seen
to be believed jake jumps from his
motorcycle to caesars leaving ellie to
grab onto the handles to keep from
crashing
while standing on the front of caesar's
bike he starts beating the crap
out of him caesar by the way is still
driving the bike
then jake starts to gouge his eyes out
now nobody is holding the handlebars
who's driving this thing
it takes an obscenely long time for jake
to poke out this guy's peepers but once
he's done he jumps back
onto his bike causing a now blinded
caesar to crash through a fence and fall
off a cliff jake takes one look down at
caesar who's now covered in gasoline
from his damaged vehicle
and says it's over we did it mikey we
did it mikey
mikey jake the guy killed your entire
family
everyone your mom dad your brother and
even uncle mac but this is just for
mikey
jake's taste for retribution is
satisfied for mikey and
nobody else and then the credits roll
our huge busted biker adventure has
finally come
to a close actually when the credits are
over a loading screen locks up the game
forcing you to hard restart the console
if you're interested in a game about
bikers and bike culture
you can find plenty to tell far better
stories than this
many with better gameplay all way more
stable
ride to hell retribution is a case study
for how not to release or maintain a
game
it's not just terrible gameplay it's
terrible on every single front
a bizarre confusing odyssey of glitches
bugs
and mega super on neuroticism playing
this experience
is like embarking on your own personal
ride to hell
likely we're underselling it when we say
it's just bad