Race with Ryan

Race with Ryan "No, I don't think I will." Genre(s): Kart racing Platform(s): Microsoft Windows Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 Xbox One Release: November 1, 2019 Engine: Unreal Engine 4 Developer(s): 3DClouds Publisher(s): Outright Games Country: United States Italy Series: Ryan's World Successor: Ryan's Rescue Squad

Race with Ryan is a 2019 kart racing game developed by 3DClouds and published by Outright Games, released for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game is based on the YouTube channel Ryan's World.

In October 2020, an updated version of the game, Race with Ryan: Road Trip Deluxe Edition, was released, featuring not only the base game, but it also comes with the DLC that includes additional tracks and characters, which can be bought separately on regular versions of the game.

A successor to this game was released on March 4, 2022, a platformer titled Ryan's Rescue Squad, also published by Outright Games.

Why Nobody Wants to Race with Him

1. Generic title and logo that looks like it was made by a kindergarten student, much like with Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, The Town with No Name, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, etc.
   • The Deluxe Edition's cover is the same as the original cover, with a different logo and picture of Ryan, and a sticker saying, 'new tracks & racers!'
   • It has exactly the same logo as the YouTube channel with a different name.
   • The box art looks as if Ryan himself was copied-and-pasted/color-screened into it, just like Pop Idol.
2. While not horrible, but okay, the graphics, like with all of Outright Games' games, look unfinished in parts and features a fairly defined low poly look, despite using Unreal Engine 4.
3. The powerups are too similar to that of the Mario Kart games, and the two that are not ripping off Mario Kart (Glue and Slime) function too similarly to each other.
4. The game's source code is a fork of Xenon Racer, which in turn is a fork of All-Star Fruit Racing, given that these games were also developed by 3DClouds. The Cutting Room Floor has a page that shows both the former's leftover content, making this game a reskin of a reskin.
5. Generic cup names too, such as "Hook Prize", "Pizza Cup", and "Hotdog Cup".
6. The game is very short, and it can be completed in only 30 minutes or less on the easiest difficulty!
7. Horrible coding and collision detection, especially with walls.
8. The controls are abysmal, and they feel broken.
9. If you get anything other than 1st place, it counts as a loss. This could encourage poor sportsmanship in children, particularly in being sore losers. Even the Mario Kart games have consolation victory animations for 2nd to 4th place (3rd in some games, even going up to 6th in later console entries starting with Wii).
10. The kart is chosen with the character you choose. There are also several reskins of the same characters in different occupations.
11. The characters don't translate well into 3D, with Gus being the worst offender, as he looks almost nothing like his animated counterpart.
12. One of the characters can only be unlocked if you play the game for over 2 hours, the exact amount of time a user is allocated to return a Steam game for a refund before it's non-refundable.
13. The cutscenes are just Ryan Kaji, his parents and his friends playing the game, and some of them are poorly shot, poorly written, poorly animated, or poorly lip-synced. The latter two can be blamed on Adobe Character Animator, the software used.
14. Poor voice acting from some of the characters, especially Ryan himself, which you can hear in the in-game menus, cutscenes, gameplay, etc. Plus, he never shuts up. Worse yet, he's always at the Bubsy levels of annoying.
    • And on top of that, it sometimes sounds like he's too close to the microphone or, in the 2020 DLC, too far away from the microphone.
15. Cheesy, repetitive soundtrack, and overall generic sound design. To be expected from a game that's just as uninspired.
16. Ryan keeps appearing for an awful LOT during a race, which gets very annoying really fast.
17. Poor product placement (or rather, self-promotion for Ryan's merchandise), such as the Surprise Eggs acting as item boxes.
18. The game costs $40 at launch when you could be buying other low-quality racing games like the original Garfield Kart from 2013 for $1 or less (during sales) or a good racing game like Trackmania Nations Forever for free, or any Mario Kart game for that matter when you don't consider its cost, except for Mario Kart Tour.
19. The DLC packs and the Deluxe Edition (both released in 2020) barely add anything new to the game, yet it expects you to pay $7 extra for just one of the two packs, and $14 for both (or buying the game and the DLC together would somehow end up being cheaper, or worth just as much as the base game by itself on digital storefronts). It also happens to be worse than the base game, as there are only four new tracks and five new character skins when you buy all the DLC. Also, for some reason, the new voice clips that Ryan recorded make him sound like he was too far away from the microphone, which feels jarringly inconsistent.
    • On that topic, the DLC is also more lazily put together than the base game, most evident by the game splicing the "Welcome to..." clip with the "Don't freeze on this track." clip during the introductory scenes of Icy Land.
20. One of the characters, "Rare Combo Panda Racer", is locked behind Ryan's World Cereal, where owners of the game can get a download code from the Kellogg's website to unlock the character for every box sold, which as of 2020, the download code for the character can no longer be legally obtained. However, some people have managed to unlock him in the 2020 update of the game just by playing a quick match, even without the purchase of the cereal, and in regions where the product was never released, proving that the decision to do such a thing is so unnecessary that it would've made better sense to have him as a regular unlockable instead.
21. All the songs in this game consists of stolen stock music from YouTube. One of the songs, which is used for both the title screen and main menu respectively is called Shoot to Kill by Geoff Bastow and Gerhard Narholz, which released a year prior to this game.
22. Despite being made in Italy, the game was never physically released there, mainly due to Ryan's World only finding major recognition in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Mexico, Japan, and other English/Spanish-speaking countries.
23. The music has a 1 second delay in some areas before looping.
24. The game, overall, in addition to all the other Ryan's World games, are shallow and cynical cash grabs aimed at promoting the Ryan's World brand, and exploting Ryan's likeness for a quick buck.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The gameplay is somewhat functional, and that's saying a lot.
2. The animated cutscenes are somewhat faithful to the source material (Which isn't any better).
3. Everyone from the YouTube channel this game was based off reprise their roles as all the Ryan's World characters that appear in this game, and most still do a good job voicing them, despite Ryan's performance being nothing short of bad (but serviceable for a kid his age at the time).
4. As said on WNWTRWH #1, the graphics, while unfinished, look okay.
5. The game could've had potential to be good, but if this game was released in the eighth generation (especially on the 3DS) and as a game not tied to any licensed IP, it could've been a lot better and more finished in some ways.

Reception

On Metacritic, the Nintendo Switch version of Race with Ryan received an average score of 51/100 based on four reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Nintendo Life gave it a 4/10 rating.

Despite being critically panned, a successor, called Ryan's Rescue Squad, was released in 2022 anyway, however, is considered a considerable improvement over Race with Ryan by many, despite ripping off most of the gameplay and concepts.

Reversed Version

Race Without Nayr

Trivia

• Disturbingly enough, there's a thankfully unused texture that is of Ryan with a horrific face that had “x" symbols for eyes, stitches in his mouth, and blood on his cheeks.
  • The offending artist is Simone Marrocco, a former technical artist at 3DClouds, who had parted ways with the company before the game was released. A Twitter post by @moriohbrew brings the evidence to light. It's very likely that Simone made this as a protesting joke or hated Ryan’s franchise, knowing that it would fly past the radar before the game's initial release. He also likely left 3DClouds because he did not enjoy contributing to this game's development.
• Certain stores like Walmart (USA) and Big W (AUS) sold store-exclusive versions of the game that come with a bonus Ryan toy at no additional cost, the former location also selling a version of Race with Ryan that comes with all the DLC as well as the base game.
• This is the third Outright Games franchise to have a sequel, after Paw Patrol and Ben 10, with Hotel Transylvania getting a second game made by them later on.

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