IT Lesson

Road Rash 2002 for PC full version with system requirements

Review:
There are two game modes in Road Rash. Thrash mode allows you to select from five skill levels, choose your course, and race. Your progress is not saved, you cannot buy new bikes, nothing. You *can* however race any track at any level and vent your frustration on the other bikers with wanton abandon.

While thrash mode is reasonably cathartic, most people will play most of their games in "Big Game Mode". In this mode, you select which character to play from a list of nearly a dozen "interesting" individuals, each of which has different fighting and racing characteristics, as well as a different model of motorcycle and their own cash reserve. Although most of the rashers are men, there are three female characters available, and my wife had no trouble identifying with at least one of them :-).

You start the "Big Game" on "The Street" in front of "Der Panzer Klub" and "Olleys Skoot-A-Rama". Entering the club allows you to "schmooze" with other rashers who may give you useful information or simply intimidate you. The content of the messages in this area seems to be loosely related to your treatment of your fellow rashers in past races. If you beat up on a particular character, he/she will be hostile. Leaving an individual alone race after race may result in friendlier comments. Pretty cool. I personally got the most enjoyment out of getting Mike and Axel upset, but running Pearl off the road resulted in a particularly nasty surprise as well :-).

From within the club, you can also choose to enter the "Restroom". The restroom is essentially the options menu, allowing you to change the game mode (thrash or big game), select one or two player mode, choose your game level (only in thrash mode), individually turn the engine sounds and in- game music on and off, load and save games, or play with the "jukebox" (more on this in the "sound" section below).

Lastly, you can select the bulletin board to view the available courses and select the one upon which you want to race.

The second major location that you can visit is "Olleys Skoot-A-Rama" cycle shop. Olley has fifteen different bikes from which to choose which are divided into three categories. You can browse all of the bikes to determine prices and set goals for yourself. You can also see stat sheets and a "fly-by" video of each one. The characteristics of each bike are entertaining, if not useful, with adjectives like "blinding" and "orgasmic" used to describe the handling, acceleration, and top speed of each. Judging only from the limited number of cycles that my friends and I have purchased, the variations dramatically affect the gameplay.

There are five courses on which you can race, each of which has different distinguishing characteristics. On one course you race along beaches and through tunnels; on another, you dodge taxis, joggers, and mailboxes; while on yet another, you race through valleys with steep, texture mapped walls. The variety is extremely refreshing. Different levels of the game however, do *not* introduce new tracks, but rather lengthen the same five courses. This results in the first few miles of every area being seen over and over again, although you get to race a few miles farther along each course with each new level. There are several points in the various courses where the road forks into two distinct paths which rejoin before crossing the finish line. Usually, each branch has a different length, number of curves, traffic density, etc. Other racers will sometime suggest a particular branch, although how much you trust them might depend on the number of dents youve made in their skull in previous races :-).

System requirements:
Ram: 16 Mb
Hard: 25 Mb
Cpu:75 Mhz
Windows Xp,Vista

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