HomeReviews2.5/5 ReviewOne Hell of a Ride Review

One Hell of a Ride Review

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One Hell of a Ride’s developers are quick to wheel out the comparisons. Check the store page and Twisted Metal and Carmageddon are proudly namechecked. But in all honesty, One Hell of a Ride isn’t much like either. We wished it WAS more full-blooded, more interested in the carnage, guts and weaponry of those combat-racers, as it might have lifted One Hell of a Ride out of its ho-hummery. As it stands, One Hell of a Ride is an extremely simple circuit racer that occasionally remembers that it’s got some homing missiles strapped to the chassis. 

It’s so simple that we worry how we’ll reach our word count. One Hell of a Ride is set up in a challenge structure, with twenty-five races lined up in a linear fashion for you to come first in. Nail the top spot, and you can move onto the next. Don’t think of these twenty-five challenges as independent tracks or modes: they’re the same five or six tracks repeated on a rota, with the number of racers changed each time. Challenge One might have you racing six weaker racers, while Challenge Six might have you swapping the lead with a single, better racer.

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There’s virtually no difference in objectives. There are no Elimination races, combat-themed races or anything of that order. You just have to cross the line first. The only spice in the soup is that the number of racers, number of laps, and your ability to use or not use weapons changes. As you can probably guess, it leaves a critical hole in the engine where variety should be. 

You’re stuck playing solo, which is the most glaring omission. One Hell of a Ride is a budget title – coming in at £5.49 – so there’s an argument for why that’s the case, but the inability to bring along a friend or four is a dent in its longevity and potential. There are no modes outside of the twenty-five challenges (you can’t even pick a track and apply the ruleset that you fancy), which means that One Hell of a Ride is shorn of pretty much anything that would keep you playing after the game has come to an end. 

While the offering is slimline, the driving is a little better. We’d advise that you quickly tap Y and change away from the incredibly clumsy third-person view (the car fills about fifty-percent of the game screen, and the camera has a habit of going for a stroll into, around, and below the wheels). The first-person view is occasionally limited, but streets ahead. 

Levels are simple circuits with the only objects-of-interest being jumps and exploding barrels. The jumps are odd old beasts, as – in the early game – they’re unavoidable hazards rather than something that’s fun to Dukes-of-Hazard over. You will only have access to cars that lack shock absorption, so you will judder back onto the track with all momentum robbed. It’s only once you upgrade your car’s shock absorbers that the ramps start eliciting the odd “wahoo!”. Exploding barrels, of course, are always an obstacle, and should be avoided accordingly. 

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What that leaves is pretty straight-up racing. We’re in drift territory here, as One Hell of a Ride loves hairpin turns and long, arcing bends. Handling is never particularly tight, regardless of whether you have upgraded it (more on that in a mo), so you’re anticipating bends full seconds before they arrive, hoping to deliver a drift that leaves the crash barriers pristine. With visibility being low, and ramps obscuring the horizon, actually anticipating corners becomes a real challenge. So, it’s horses for courses: are you the kind of racer who likes memorising turns, and jamming the brake (or taking a foot off the accelerator) during turns in your arcade-style racers? If so, One Hell of a Ride might provide a short burst of fun. In our case, we had hopes for something a little less high maintenance. 

We’re not channelling much of the spirit of Twisted Metal or Carmageddon here, are we? Combat does exist in One Hell of a Ride, but only in the form of a baked-in weapon for your car. There are no power-ups or Mario Kart-style weapon crates here: what you’re dealing with is a weapon – mostly homing missiles and lightning bolts – that has a set number of uses. In the early parts of the game, you’re firing two salvos per lap. As you upgrade, that might reach six or seven. 

It’s a system that might sound okay on paper, but is a capricious beast in reality. You can, if you want, fire your weapons in the first second of the race and immediately kill the person in front of you. That person respawns of course, but you’ve already got a healthy advantage. Or, you can kill them moments before they hit the finishing line, saving up all of your homing missiles for a guaranteed kill (the missiles can and often do go through obstacles and around corners). You will soon learn to do the latter, and rack up a near certain victory. Very generally, being given pocket money for weapons every lap isn’t particularly interesting, and leads to repeat behaviours, rather than the randomness and strategy of other games. We give it a thumbs down.

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Where One Hell of a Ride gets things right, though, is in its Garage and Shop. No matter where you rank in a race, you will pocket some cash. That cash can be spent on new cars and upgrades to said cars. But considering the flimsiness of everything else around it, we ended up surprised by just how much can be overclocked. Nitro, weapons, engine, armour, absorbers and tires can all be ratcheted up a good dozen times, giving you a hefty ceiling for improving your car. It’s more than we’d expect from a £5.49 racer, and we loved how it made even a failure seem like progress.

But One Hell of a Ride has an identity crisis. It presents itself as a carnage-filled Twisted Metal, yet hasn’t spent enough time on the weapons to make them anything other than an afterthought. As an arcade racer, it’s too precise and simulation-like, without offering variety in races or tracks. To top it off, it’s single-player only. 

Unfortunately, ‘One Hell of a Ride’ begins to sound more like an insult than a recommendation. 

You can buy One Hell of a Ride from the Xbox Store

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