This is less of an issue when you are the only racer on the screen however, when 6 or so racers are present, with the open world atmosphere, the game barely runs at 30FPS and the aforementioned issue becomes more of a serious problem. Your worst adversary is going to be the controls, which most of the time feel as if you pushed the button to turn or brake 5+ seconds before the game reacts. The controls and AI don’t fare much better, as the other riders will regularly veer off and slam into buildings for no good reason, which makes losing pretty difficult. Since the text pushing the story forward is displayed in a group text chat format (yeah, that annoying thing your mother or most annoying friend does), I found myself cranking my own heavy metal music and skipping the sound all together fairly early into my time with the title.
The sound design isn’t much better, featuring a synch rock techno-ish soundtrack from the 90’s as well as boorish, poorly acted voice overs. The only exception to this is when you collide with certain obstacles in the game, which is weird because some that would result in certain death are ignored (if not driven through), and others that shouldn’t cause issue send you flying, as if you’re playing the Insurance Fraud mini-game from Saint’s Row. You’ll sit on your bike with your weapon always at your side, and even when taking sharp turns, your rider never moves, almost like it’s an action figure stuck to an RC toy. Additionally, the character models are very static. With a lot of texture popping and clipping, as well as a grey tone that’s washed over everything, Road Rage is kind of ugly to look at.
The game’s visuals are on par with most late PS2/early PS3 games, and do not take advantage of the current-gen hardware in any obvious way. Respawns are also an issue at times, as the game will drop you into the world from a highly elevated point, at which point you explode this happened repeatedly in some instances. The game often seemed to forget that I had died and left me to watch my rider lay on the pavement, forcing me to restart the event. The game is quite buggy, and I was subject to a large number of glitches ranging from invisible walls to being catapulted for no reason. This lead me on a wild goose chase multiple times looking for the next mission so I could move on with my current build. Unfortunately, you have to unlock a certain number of extras to proceed, and the map does not show you the requirements until you drive to the marker to start the mission. The earnings will be used to purchase new bikes, upgrades for said bikes, as well as weapons and items. As you progress through the story missions, new districts will open up, which will lead to side objectives that can be completed for money.
This is the bulk of the game, which does tend to get boring fairly quickly, as the title is very reliant on grinding. You’ll spend your time driving from point A to point B, occasionally picking up packages, assassinating other riders, picking up on circuit races, and performing style challenges.
These pesky officers of the law will also show up later in the game to add some additional mechanics to the often stale and repetitive game. Sadly, it’s not open for much exploration off the rip if you leave the area your current objectives are on, you’ll immediately gain the attention of the law enforcement in the area and they will try and likely succeed at making you eat the pavement. Like any open world game, the world is divided up into districts.