Redout 2 Review

In the future, anti-gravity racing is the most popular sport in the galaxy; no one wants to be stuck with their vehicles touching the ground! You are a pilot of these high-speed hover ships as you try to cross the finish line before your opponents and not take too much damage in the process. Redout 2 claims that it is the fastest racing game in the universe, and after playing it, I think they are right: the racing action is ridiculously fast! The goal is to become the Solar Redout Racing League champion, but it will take a lot of practise to get there!

Redout 2 takes everything you loved about the Wipeout and F-Zero series — the high adrenaline, action, and lightning-fast speeds — and combines it with gorgeous visuals and a fantastic original soundtrack to get your heart pumping. When you first start playing, the best thing you can do is play through the rookie academy in Career Mode. These tutorials will teach you how to steer, pitch, roll, and strafe. Once you have the basics figured out you will learn how to use boosting effectively. Use it too much, and your vehicle will overheat, and if you lose control and smash into walls or your opponents, you will do damage to your hovercraft. Take too much damage and it will be destroyed meaning a replacement vehicle will have to be brought in, wasting precious time as your rivals will zip past you. But this could also mean the end depending on which race type you have chosen to play, as arena race doesn’t let you respawn and the damage that your vehicle incurs will increase as time goes by, making this one of the most challenging types. Redout 2 has a couple of other race types that I have not seen in a game before that are really cool to try out: in Last Man Standing, each lap the speed increases and the driver in last place is eliminated; Speed, like in the movie of the same name, requires you to stay over the target speed, and if you drop below and you will be destroyed; and Boss Mode has multiple tracks seamlessly combined together without any loading screens in between. I consider this last one a marathon mode!

In Redout 2 there are three different types of modes to play:

Career Mode — the main single-player experience; there are over 250 events to race through spread over 10 different locations and 36 unique racetracks. All of these tracks can also be played in reverse for a new experience, bringing the total to 72 tracks to race on.

Arcade Mode — throws you right into the racing action. All the above-mentioned tracks are available straight away along with all the different ships to race, there is no unlocking anything here.

Multiplayer — lets you race against other players online with up to 12 people racing at once. There will be regularly added custom content and seasons that reward you with bonus aesthetic items. Later in 2022, a ranked season will be available to play.

Redout 2 lets players select between six difficulty levels depending on their skill and how much of a challenge they want. There are sliders that can assist with any aspect of driving, like rolling in-flight or helping with pitching when you are on a slope. You can change these sliders at any time in the game settings. I’ve been playing with just the default settings and I’ll warn you it is incredibly challenging, I think I may have to alter the settings a bit to lower the difficulty. Redout also has a garage where you can create your very own hover ship using one of the 12 base chassis then customising how it looks, and how it functions concentrating on the stats that matter more to you. Just a warning, if you focus only on increasing the speed you are going to have a hard time controlling that machine! With stabilisers, rocket engines, flaps, wings, spoilers, and paint to unlock you can create some pretty cool-looking vehicles!

Redout 2 is the crazy fast, anti-gravity racing game we have missed since playing Wipeout years ago and since Nintendo has been neglecting F-Zero. It looks beautiful, but it’s really hard to take in the details of the scenery when you are driving upwards of 1000 km/h — if you take your eyes off the track chances are you will smash into something or fly right off into a pit of lava. The difficulty level here is quite high so if you jump in thinking you will do well because you have played racing games before, you may be disappointed; especially if you think you will be able to attack your opponents with weapons like in Wipeout, as you will just have to use your boosts and manoeuvring skills to get past them. There are a lot of different things to keep track of when you are racing like using your strafe, pitch, and roll, and not overheating from using too many boosts — try to watch out for areas where you will need to jump across large chasms because if you don’t use a boost the hovercraft will fall down to the world below. There is a ton here to do if you are willing to put in some practise hours by doing time trials and learning what you need to do to keep your speed up. Don’t forget it’s okay to let go of the gas or tap the brake when you are trying to go around a sharp turn, it’s better than smashing into the side and damaging your vehicle!