Wild and crazy bike racing with loads of violence and nasty crashes to keep the excitement level high!

Introduction

Get on your bike and prove your worth to the biker gangs – if you are tough enough you will stand as victor in the meanest possible struggle of the roads. In Road Rash Jailbreak you choose a gang to join and start your career as a biker thug fighting for money and fame.

The Game

Road Rash Jailbreak plays similar to previous Road Rash titles. It’s a fast, punishing, gritty, no-rules underground motorcycle competition where the winner takes it all. The whole game has an aggressive attitude that is very easy to relate to – it’s very far over the top and has a unique punk rock style. The game revels in controversial matters such as speeding and even beating police officers and avoiding law enforcement by any means necessary in order to continue the illegal race. Best of all, it all amounts to a whole lot of fun!

Content

There are some different game modes in this game. The single-player campaign mode is called “Jailbreak” where you pursue the career of becoming the most skilled rasher. The mode “Five-O” is where you play as a police officer trying to stop and capture law breakers from different gangs. This works as a mini campaign of sorts. There’s also a pretty standard Time Trial, where you race to beat your record.

There are different bikes you can buy (when you can afford them), and there are around 30 different courses you can race on. There’s even trophies and ranks you can attain, so all in all there’s a lot to do here!

As you might have guessed, this is a wild game altogether. The game keeps running at a very high and pleasurable speed – even the cheap bikes feel blazing fast, and the frame rate stands firm most of the time. As you play and get into the style and attitude of the game, you will laugh when you see opponents crash into trees or cars, and you will feel twitchy when the police sirens start wailing behind you.

Excitement is very much a constant in this game. You’ll be zigzagging between passing cars, skidding along the highway, take tight turns in heart stopping speeds. Sometimes all this as you are beating the living hell out of a rival thug that tries to push you off the road or knock you off your bike.
Sure, there has been other Road Rash titles before this, so the concept is not entirely new. It’s not new at all actually, but it’s still fun, and it still works!

Controls

Your bike has different specs; acceleration, durability and top speed, and you can choose between having arcade handling or simulation handling – the difference between these two are basically how easily your bike starts to drift. The controls take a little getting used to – no matter which bike you choose, it will feel very slippery. This certainly isn’t to your advantage, because you will have to pull off some life-threatening narrow escapes here and there and dodge different kinds of hazards that lie along the road.

There are a lot of moves you can do here – many new additions compared to previous entries in the series. You can use different weapons, such as a chain, a baseball bat, tasers, and more. You can do roundhouse kicks (!) that potentially knocks a target off of their bike with one hit. There’s also a button for taunting opponents, which fits right into the in-your-face attitude of the game. Another new feature which I personally find a little odd, is that when you get knocked off your bike you can press the “recovery button”. This immediately teleports you back to your bike so that you won’t have to run back to it. It sure keeps the pace up, and helps you get back on track after an accident – but it almost feels like cheating because sometimes it can be used to escape from the police too.

Multiplayer

The multiplayer modes go very far too. There’s a standard “Skull To Skull” mode which allows you to race on a split screen with a friend. Your goal is to race fast and beat down as many opponents as possible.

“Cops & Robbers” lets you play as a cop chasing the felon in split screen. One player races along in the race as usual (together with AI controlled racers), whole the other player plays as the cop.
“Side Car” mode comes in both co-op and versus modes where you have a bike with a side car – in co-op you try to beat AI controlled opponents. One player does the racing whole the other does the fighting from the side car. Versus pits four players in a side car vs. side car race, which is bound to become a wild ride indeed!

You’ll also be able to adjust some options for the multiplayer games; if you want to split the screen vertically or horizontally and if you want to have “Catch up” enabled or not. (This helps the player behind catch up by getting a minor boost to the speed).

Graphics

The graphics are pretty standard for the platform – the view distance is pretty good, which is important in a game like this, and the frame rate is high. This contributes to giving you an incredible feeling of freedom – blazing through cities, deserts, and countrysides really feels nice in this game. The developers have done a great job in capturing the right atmosphere here!
You can also see lights from streetlamps, and the police bikes red and blue lights illuminate the dark streets as you race on forward.
Sometimes you bump into trashcans and send them flying across the town, and sometimes you see an opponent fly hundreds of feet after a frontal collision with an oncoming car – hilarious!

Sound

The soundtrack adds a very nice touch to the game. There’s an impressive list of songs, and you can select which bands you want to include or exclude from your playlist. All songs are perfectly handpicked for the game, and they all fit right in – gritty punk rock from bands such as Sugar Ray, Slave Unit and Celldweller. There are also many indie bands included, all very talented and right at home in this context. It really doesn’t get much better than this!

Along with all the chaos of the traffic, you will also hear taunts, screams, and yells from your rival racers, which contributes greatly to the underground and raw feeling of the whole experience.

Summary

This game is very cool and a fresh breeze in the racing worlds goody two shoes games like Need for Speed. The graphics are nice and fast, the soundtrack is great, the gameplay has all the insane quirks Road Rash titles are famous for. The only thing I oppose in this game is the slippery controls, which basically ruins much of the potential fun, but with some training it can be mastered. When you master the bikes, there’s really only one thing stopping you from beating the game; the frustration that arises when you skid out of control or crash into something that makes you lose a race – which will happen a lot!

Developed By: Electronic Arts
Published By: Electronic Arts
Version Reviewed: PlayStation
Genre: Racing
Players: 1-4 Split Screen / 1-6 Alternating
Also Available On: Game Boy Advanced
Released: 1999