Raider's Race Tournament Demo

Action-oriented racing games are not particularly popular, but it’s enough for a handful of them to be good in order to attract a huge audience. You only need to think about Carmageddon or Re-Volt to see how much potential there is in the genre, but it is also true that the developers need to do a good job when it comes to blending the action with the racing elements.

Raider's Race Tournament is an Unreal Engine 4 experiment that aims to combine fast-paced action sequences with flashy vehicles and all the explosions you can handle. Unfortunately, the resulting concoction is not one to be excited about right now, but there might be some hope left. In essence, as long as the actual vehicles are refined and they make you truly experience speed at least a little, you can get a bit of fun out of the game.

To begin with, the developers took their inspiration from classics like Mad Max and Tron, although it is a bit difficult to see how the game at hand resulted from those two. Granted, the environments seem rather post-apocalyptic, and the vehicle you drive almost looks like a bike from Tron, so maybe there is some truth to that. On the other hand, it’s not as gritty as Mad Max, nor fast and flashy like Tron.

As stated before, the actual racing is boring and slow, for some reason. The vehicle just moves very slowly, especially if you happen to respawn on a slope. Due to the fact that you are automatically respawned if you move five centimeters in the wrong direction (even in reverse), you can pretty much grow a beard trying to climb some sections. Thankfully, you can let the anger out using the car’s top-mounted gun, which holds unlimited ammunition, needs no reloading, and doesn’t overheat at all.

Special power-ups can be picked up along the way as well. Some can instantly repair your vehicle, while others allow you to lay traps for the opponents. Speaking of which, you have the option to race with other people in multiplayer games, which should be interesting. On the other hand, it’s almost sad to see Unreal Engine 4 in this state, because you wouldn’t know this wasn’t a 2003 game if you didn’t need DirectX 10 to run it.

All things considered, Raider's Race Tournament might still turn into something exciting and fun, if the developers fix the faulty and pretty much pointless obstacles, make the vehicles go faster, and apply some proper textures and post-processing effects. Until then, this is not really worth your time.