Riptide GP: Renegade Review

Review Riptide GP: Renegade review | Believe it or not, Vector Unit will always have a place in my gaming heart for the fantastic Hydro Thunder Hurricane. The other console games from Vector have been a hit and miss but showed great potential, so what will it be for Renegade? Let’s find out in this review. 

THE GOOD

• Let’s talk about the main single player mode first and why I’m really positive about it. Vector Unit hasn’t been lazy and tied it together with a simple but effective story. Building a crew together to face the bad guy in the story, Krex. That guy made some things difficult in your life, so you are out for revenge. Alright, alright, I know it’s not the most original story but I appreciate the effort that Vector did creating interesting characters. They could have just made you go through all the races without a real goal, now you have reason and are rewarded with some enjoyable dialogue.  Earning and improving your jet ski’s is an important task in Riptide and helps keeping things interested. 
• What’s the most important thing for a racing game? Some might say controls but for me the tracks are the reason for loving a racing game or not. You don’t have a lot of choice but all the tracks show that the developer spend a lot of time making them stand out. Each level has something special like fire effects, flying cars or underwater life and objects. Not to mention the insane jumps and fantastic art-design and sound effects. All the tracks are a real blast to play and raise Riptide GP: Renegade’s fun level through the roof.
• Visual quality is pretty high and the performance remains top-notch, even in split screen. Sure this isn’t the Forza Horizon 3 with water, this is a budget game after all, textures can be a little blurry but I was highly impressed by the realistic water effect and art-design. Tracks are very detailed and creative.
• Controls are spot on and doing cool looking tricks can be done by everyone. This is an arcade game after all so it was important that the controls didn’t become too difficult . Gaining air by ramps or large waves remains fun and impressive and never become frustrating.
• For only €10 you get the Xbox One and Windows 10 version, Renegade is an Xbox Play Anywhere title. I don’t say this often but the game could have easily been €20 , you get a game that you can play for hours and hours, 6 player split screen and you can play online with 8 players. The value is tremendous and every Xbox One gamer simply has to buy this game.
• Making things even more exciting and dangerous is the police force. Sometimes they will hunt you down, you are doing some illegal racing .. naughty, naughty! Sure it might be a little frustrating to lose a race because the police is ruining your perfect racing line but I loved the extra difficulty. Things become a little less predictable too and you need your full attention dodging blue lights.

Mixed Feelings

• More tracks would have been welcome, the available tracks provide enough variation but I’m sure some players will get a repetitive feeling playing the same track over and over again in the Career Mode.

THE BAD

• Riptide GP: Renegade excels in everything but the music and sound seemingly missed the quality label. Music is very generic and because extremely tiresome very fast and the futuristic jet ski’s miss some punch in the sound effects. You have a few stand out moments, like the cave head laughter but that’s about it.  My advice for Vector Unit would be to invest a little more in the sound department, because that’s the only thing that isn’t great about Renegade.

Score 90% | Is Riptide GP: Renegade perfect? Hell no, but it has been a long time since I had so much fun with an arcade racing game. Gameplay and fun is the main reason why the game has such a high rating, the visual richness, high customization options and many multiplayer options are others reasons why Renegade is insanely good.  Vector Unit has made me forget Hydro Thunder Hurricane and that alone was an extraordinary task.