Outlaw Chopper

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Outlaw Chopper
Outlaw-Chopper.jpg
The progenitor of Ride to Hell: Retribution, which is as underdeveloped as that legacy.
Protagonist: Rex
Genre: Action
Racing
Platforms: Microsoft Windows
Xbox (cancelled)
Release Date: July 11, 2006
Game Engine: Unreal Engine 2
Developer: Jarhead Games
Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games
Made in: Canada


Outlaw Chopper is a 2006 action-racing video game based on the adventures of typical American motorcyclists. Developed by Canadian studio Jarhead Games (which is known for making budget games, such as Elite Forces: Navy SEALs, including its sequel, and the Marine Sharpshooter series) and published by Vivendi Universal Games (the company who merged with Activision to create Activision Blizzard).

This is another game alongside the Torrente series and the Car Jacker series that tries to imitate the Grand Theft Auto series.

The game was also supposed to be released on Xbox, but the plan was buried by publishers before the game was released for Microsoft Windows.[1]

Plot

A motorcyclist named Rex, after the five years spend on the prison, decides to take revenge on the one who exiled him and took over his entire gang. On that fateful day, when a guy called Blade, joined the group, he fraternized with lord of the streets shortly after his arrival, standing shoulder to shoulder in him. The latter turns out to be a traitor who, during one operation, throws Rex into the hands of the police and takes all his belongings along with the gang.

Gameplay

You explore an open city environment and complete missions and side jobs to progress the plot. For most of the game, you will be riding on your chopper, which can be customized by earning money from missions. Many of the missions range from courier jobs to heists and assassination jobs, as well as races.[2]

Why It Sucks

  1. The main menu is made along the least resistance line.
    • First, what you notice is that when you start the game, you see a completely different logo than what was added on the cover, where it is written in Gothic font.
    • The appearance of the main menu itself is inadequate to the atmosphere of motorcyclists and looks more like it was created for a game in which you drive a truck, not including the motorcycle next to the driver.
    • As befits a budget muff, the options use the standard font (which also appears during the gameplay in message boxes), as if it were stolen from Vegas Pro. In the game settings, the default, controls and return options are barely visible, which use dark colors, which can be a difficulty for someone with poor eyesight.
      • Returning to the settings, the background that was seen in the main menu does not appear, but a black screen, which shows the laziness of the creators and waiting for simple cash from naive players.
      • The last aspect worth mentioning is that the options for configuring graphic effects, texture quality, or lighting level are missing.
    • However, the greatest display of absolute awfulness are credits, where it shows each name and position of the employee singly against the gloomy background who was involved in creating or testing the game, making it over eight minutes long.
  2. Embarrassingly bad cutscenes that probably do not know the definition of "budget" and look as if a blind man or monkey from under the trepanation of skull would do such horribleness.
  3. The gameplay is absolutely devoid of soul and human dignity. The game was essentially intended to capture the motorcyclist vibe, offering an open world, with a typical American small town, but it turned out to be a hopeless Grand Theft Auto clone that resembles an unfinished action-adventure game from Rockstar Games, in an early stage of development with extremely limited missions, where mostly your responsibility there is driving from A to B (where in this known franchise you rarely experienced it). Sometimes there are racing missions, also you will be forced to follow another vehicle, and other times you will attack random pedestrians designated by the client by hitting them with a baseball bat, or hitting them with your vehicle.
  4. The controls, or driving model in racing games, is probably one of the worst aspects of the whole game, matching the level of Big Rigs. It is so viciously tragic to such an extent that it would be more comfortable to walk on a slippery floor, with your feet smeared with butter. The motorcycle is steered like a shopping cart, turns like if it has been stepped on a banana peel, adding a glue at the same time, and brakes extremely late like an elementary school student going to school.
  5. Although the game was made on Unreal Engine 2, which for its time still offers great graphics in some games, Outlaw Chopper does not belong to that category. It presents itself at an embarrassing level with the prevailing poverty, as in shops in the times of the communism era.
    • The graphics look hopeless in every aspect, making DOOM 3, F.E.A.R., and Half-Life 2 have an absolutely better visual presentation than this game (respectfully to the games mentioned earlier).
    • The quality of the textures is reminiscent of a rotten cucumber dipped in quick-drying paint, the character models look like they were shorted in the incubator, the natural elements are almost non-existent, the accompanying vehicles that look like colored matchboxes, carved out of the shape of vehicles, and buildings that offer the same window textures on a given building.
  6. Returning to the topic of ripping-off anything, as mentioned at least the concept of the game, for some reason the main character resembles the Postal Dude, derived from the POSTAL series. As you look at it longer, it could not have been a coincidence that the character model had not been stolen, and it's worth mentioning that the Postal Dude existed before this game.
  7. Since the graphics were at a very low level, the audio also leaves a lot to be desired.
    • The first thing to immediately throw your speakers or headphones out of the window are the sound effect of vehicle collision which sounds like a photocopier hit by a hammer.
    • The voice acting is performed unbelievably lazy, but not to the extent of this legacy, but still sounds cheesy. They sound tired, depressed, and dreadfully bland. By the way, they speak as if they were to be prepared for an oral answer without the help of a book or scratchpad.
  8. As befits another game made with low effort from Jarhead Games, you can usually expect unusual ragdolls that you will definitely see in this case. Ragdolls look as if your motorcyclist was employed in a circus performing tricks impossible for humanity, or during crashing in a traffic accident, he flies out like a crash test dummy.
  9. The animations, or rather an its imitation, look cheesy, especially the leg movement animations, which consist of a few animation frames. The lip-syncing is reminiscent of teeth chattering. The NPC's movement animations are stiff, and even remind them as if their legs are heavy. The animation of hitting with a baseball bat looks unrealistic, and is more like fooling around with a light stick than with a weapon for which some people would not be able to lift with one hand.
  10. The game, although it offers an open world, Rockland City is generally poor and completely wasted potential.
    • The first thing you can fault is its content, although there are many different buildings, there are highways, and many places to meet in American towns, they offer extremely low content, not including in situations during doing a mission (only in cutscenes). From the interactions in the city beyond the boring wandering, there is only a vehicle modification in the workshop. Here you definitely do not expect anything in other buildings, such as a store, police station or hospital.
    • Completing the mission is linear, primarily on a path marked by the creators using navigation. When Grand Theft Auto games offer you several missions at once, you can choose whatever you want to do now, where in this game you won't get it, just single missions after another.
    • The last thing that makes the game worse, when you go beyond the border, marked with green arrows and stripes, there is a loading screen for a few seconds, where, for example, in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released two years before this game, they did not appear at all, but were barred as in reality with objects placed on the road (until moments that you go through missions in another city).
  11. The plot is generic and the events unfold poorly. It's reminiscent of a typical lazy plot in adult games, where at least freedom and revenge are involved. Basically, you can ignore it completely, it won't make any difference to the gameplay. The typical guy returns from a nasty place (in this game from prison) decides to go back to the crew, planning to get revenge on the one who kicked him out and took the gang. Then Blade joins the gang who later turned out to be a traitor, handing your character you control, Rex, over to the police and taking all his belongings with the gang. Your task is to complete a new gang of motorcyclists, get an individual with it at any cost, and complete your destiny.
  12. The absolutely hopeless activity of the police, devoid of realism, in a word of recognition, builds the stereotype of the low efforts of policemen in general. Along with the number of misdemeanors, the level of police commitment also increases, as in the Grand Theft Auto series.
  13. Absolutely awful artificial intelligence, devoid of gray cells, both in ordinary drivers, police, and opponents.
  14. The physics, collision system, and realism offered in this work are incredible when it comes to their awfulness.
    • As is was mentioned in WIS#7 about these paralytic ragdolls, it is also worth mentioning that when the vehicle collides with the object, the main character's body flies out a long distance, like little balls with supersonic force, while experiencing countless convulsions. Regardless of your speed at a given time, whenever you hit a plant or even street light sources.
    • When crashing a given NPC with a motorcycle, the NPC sometimes rises above the vehicle, rather than being crashed by a vehicle, at least when he's close to the wall. And it always happens that after the same situation, but not next to the objects, the NPC stands like a tree, but pushed by a vehicle.
    • Blood flows from the body too soon after falling off the motorcycle after a road accident (of course after taking damage), which is unrealistic because it should happen a few seconds later, as it happens in real. On the one hand, it wouldn't be a problem if it spilled little, then in the case of the game it's the opposite, no matter how mild and brutal the way to take damage is. Additionally, the blood itself looks more like tomato paste than its real counterpart.
    • The physics and weight of motorcycles tend to be unrealistic, most often in a situation where, for example, one of the pursued enemies is riding over the trunk of the car, suddenly jumping like Mario or a rabbit from a high height.
    • There is the incredibly pathetic physics of water that can be freely penetrated like air, breaking the laws of physics of water, which is a liquid body. By the way, you won't experience any water splashing effect.
  15. This game is filled with all kinds of technical problems. Is is possibly one of the most technically problematic games ever released.
    • Its stability:
    • The large number of bugs and glitches:
      • Levitating bodies in the air with their limbs extended.
      • In a situation where the taxi blocks the road, a moment later they disappear into the fog.
      • Moments after you close the message box, you lose the control of the motorcycle.
      • Sometimes you encounter flashing doors and windows that cannot decide whether to be in front of or behind the building wall.
      • The collision detection sometimes stops working with the game, sometimes having the ability to temporarily penetrate an object, for example vehicles and road lamps.
      • Sometimes it happens that the police take you to the police station, even though you did not do anything, which makes worse, even one of the opponents contributed to it.
      • When you collide with an opponent's motorcycle, it happens that after you get up on the vehicle, the opponent suddenly loses the vehicle.
      • The opponent, after driving onto the side of the front side of the vehicle, suddenly breaks the laws of physics, lifting a car that is technically much heavier than a motorcycle.
      • In a situation where the scooter is standing close to a wall or fence, it is suddenly carried over your vehicle, hovering over an invisible object, or technically speaking, the hitbox of your vehicle.
      • When your opponent will completely take your health, as in the case of a collision with a motorcycle, you will also experience the lack of a vehicle, where the opponent is lying by the way.
  16. While modding the vehicle is generally solid for a budget game, as mentioned in RQ#4, there is one important aspect that discourages modding. The problem is the price, which is absurdly too high for the quality of modding. Apart from the brake, the rest of the part of the vehicle is irrelevant to the vehicle's steering feel, they only change cosmetically.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. The concept of the game, where you experience the adventure of motorcyclists, is original, because you will rarely find games with such a theme. The concept had all the potential if it were not created by inexperienced programmers with a low budget.
  2. The cover is pretty good, even though you can feel the atmosphere of budget games at times. Basically, the cover is reminiscent of a game similar to Grand Theft Auto in which you would play the main role as a biker or a racing game with a similar theme.
  3. Although the rest of the audio aspects are generally poor, the soundtrack is fine, being catchy rock or heavy metal tracks. The most notable is the music from the main menu.
  4. Although modifying the vehicle has its weakness mentioned in WIS#13, at least you can modify anything other than the colors of the part of the vehicle. A whole range of modifiable parts is also offered. From the engine, driveline, headlights, fuel tank, exhaust pipe, and ending with bumpers and rims. Additionally, changing the brake is of any importance, it has a real impact on your bike and its functionality.

Reception

The game was received quite poorly by critics. The game is so little known that there are only two reviews from gaming websites. One of them is Alex Navarro of GameSpot, the same reviewer who gave for Big Rigs the lowest possible score (1/10 - Abysmal), gave for Outlaw Chopper a 2.4/10 (Terrible), shortly describing "This god-awful Grand Theft Auto clone looks, sounds, and plays like it cost even less to make than it will cost you to buy it." Criticism was mostly related to the graphics, controls, combat mechanics, and repetitive missions.[3]

The second and last critic, the Russian website Absolute Games (ag.ru), gave the game 38%, shortly describing "This is what GTA looks like if you look at it through the eyes of hopelessly budget developers."[4]

In the case of video reviews, the only one who managed to review the game was the Polish YouTuber BartekGM, who gave a rating of 0/10 in his Internet show Najgorsze Gry Wszechczasów. He described "Outlaw Chopper is a fucking shit that should never be released. From the visual side, which rejects with a mouse, the plot, which smells like two miles of trash, rolled to vomit grind, as pleasant as wiping your ass with a doormat, lazily-done plot missions, to the acting of a spiritual successor from Eutechnyx, a crude driving model, ubiquitous wandering, and finally stability, and an incarnate swarm of shortcomings and technical stumbles."[5]

Videos

References

  1. ↑ The cancelled Xbox version of Outlaw Chopper - GameFAQs: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox/930417-outlaw-chopper
  2. ↑ MobyGames' gameplay description: https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/outlaw-chopper
  3. ↑ GameSpot's review: https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/outlaw-chopper-review/1900-6154700/
  4. ↑ Absolute Games' review: https://ag.ru/games/outlaw-chopper/review
  5. ↑ BartekGM's review (Quote: 14:52): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwveUUPSJ8A&t=892s

Comments


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Zeephare

one month ago
Score 1
The grandfather of making horrible motorcyclist-themed games. Deep Silver and Eutechnyx did such good tribute (in a terrible way) to this abomination!
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ThePCGamer

one month ago
Score 2
Good cover, bad game
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HinD

one month ago
Score 2
Great idea, terrible execution.
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Zeephare

one month ago
Score 1
Nice music, horrible voice acting.
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