Official Score
Overall - 25%
25%
Wild Ride has done the unthinkable by making a destruction derby boring. The rough engine, lack of options, and incompetent AI make this arena-based brawler feel half-baked.
Devil Kitty Games takes players on a wild ride with their appropriately titled Wild Ride. Offering three different cars and unlimited firepower, should players enter the ring and get ready to throw down?
Wild Ride Review
Boot Wild Ride up and you’ll know exactly what to expect in this vehicular combat game. Choosing from three different rides that vary based on their speed, acceleration, armor, and weapon, players will choose the arena of their choice and throw down. The goal is simple: take down as many enemy racers as you can without being taken out yourself.
Trying to do so, however, is an exercise in futility. It all starts to fall apart when the controls come into play. The driving mechanics are what you would expect on paper, but the slow acceleration of all cars and wide turning radius makes it feel like you’re commandeering a boat.
This would be hard enough as it is, but when trying to navigate narrow city streets, larger-that-life living rooms, and spaceports, the environment proves to be the worst enemy of them all. It is far too easy to bump into something, and the intermittent collision detection means that some objects will affect your ride while others don’t.
From the looks of things, the enemy AI struggles with this element too. In nearly every match we played, the AI would scrape up against walls, dead-end itself behind dumpsters, and neatly wedge itself behind the sturdiest of lampposts. When this happens, it’s easy to unload everything you’ve got into these foes, giving you the upper hand. However, this just ends up feeling like a hollow victory.
The weaponry of each car gets the job done, but it’s nothing to write home about. Each car has a primary shot that dishes out a double stream of bullets, but this “shotgun” approach lacks nuance. Players can simply lay on the fire button straight from the get-go without any fear of repercussion. There is a secondary function that drops a mine-like object, but the aforementioned AI makes this approach an unwise one.
There are some power-ups that can be picked up along the way, but none make a huge impact overall. Either way, most matches are over in a matter of minutes, with only a tally of the number of enemies taken down serving as a form of accomplishment. Rather, those who are unsuccessful in their pursuit will be insulted by the game, with the succinct message “Did you even try?” greeting them at the end.
Rounding things out is a roughshod audiovisual package. Music is taken from filmmusic.io and incompetech.com with a Creative Commons license, and is about as memorable as you would expect. Everything has a low-poly, washed out look to it as well – this could have just as easily been released on the Dreamcast back in 2000.
Wild Ride has done the unthinkable by making a destruction derby boring. The rough engine, lack of options, and incompetent AI make this arena-based brawler feel half-baked.
