Redout 2 Preview – Hands on the pulse-pounding future racing sequel

Time Stamp: March 15, 2022 9:00 AM

Future racing is video games. Blindingly fast, visually impressive, technically challenging, and boundlessly imaginative, from genre icons like F-Zero and WipEout to modern takes like Pacer and Fast RMX, the impossible is made possible with a controller in your hand. 34BigThings’ own future racer Redout was an impressive offering from a small indie team, and they continued to do things a little bit differently by expanding the Redout universe’s lore with the on-rails shooting action of Redout Space Assault. Now they’re returning with Redout 2, building on the futuristic setting while retooling the anti-grav racing, all in an effort to be the fastest, most heart-pumping and dynamic future racer we’ve ever seen.

Our preview time with Redout 2 let us take in the first three locations, visiting Cairo, Fuji and Mars. Just as with Redout, the team at 34BigThings have brought a unique sense of design and world-building to the track design that lets it stand out amongst the future racers of recent years. Guiseppe, lead designer for the sequel told us, “With the first Redout we wanted it to feel like a race on rollercoasters – we’ve kept the same principles, but with more terrains, with your craft responding differently depending on the type of landscape.”

These first three locations meld intricate loops and curves of the tracks with the different landscapes to excellent effect. Fuji is an early favourite, with its beautiful trees and traditional Japanese architecture a visual juxtaposition with the melded metal and glass of the Redout racing league track. There’s a welcome return to Cairo as well, taking in the events of Redout Assault with a massive pyramid memorialising ground zero.

Redout 2 really beds into its unique world vision of the future, and as a weapon-less racer there’s a purity to the on-track action that remains refreshing. While some may decry the loss of the original’s armaments, it means that this is a racer that lives and dies on your own abilities, and there’s none of those arbitrary Mario Kart-esque moments where you’re beaten by a lucky offensive pickup.

Redout 2 Japan

The lack of weaponry is just one part of the team’s push for believability. As Valerio states, it’s “a more mature version of the motorsport, with more coherence to the world.” He continued, “we wanted it to be more believable, to build a world and join it to the Redout lore and the Redout Assault lore. Backstory helps to breathe life into the world, and make it feel like a real motorsport.”

You can feel the exceptionally precise control with every gentle curve of the left analogue stick when steering, while strafing and pitch and roll are handled by the right stick. Redout 2 feels like a twin-stick racer, a smidgen of shared DNA with games like Virtua-On further pushing it away from other gravity racers like Wipeout and Pacer. It’s a real step up from the handling model of the original, with a tautness that wasn’t there before.

The team were very clear that they wanted the Redout series to sit atop the future racing genre as the fastest out there, and Redout 2 seems to be exactly where they want to be. Referencing F-Zero X, the racing here is blisteringly fast, and that’s before you hit a boost pad that pushes your craft even further.

Redout 2 Racing

That speed could often make the original Redout punishingly tough. The sequel looks to make the action more accessible than ever before with Guiseppe stating, “we made the effort to be as inclusive as possible. There are six different difficulties, and now there are driving assists to bring the game to everyone. We really care about accessibility.”

While the visuals are dynamic and memorable, the audio design has been important too, right down to the sound of the different propulsion engines; “we used Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and jet engines to help us create the sound of future racing.”

There’s a whole host of customisation and upgrade options for your craft, swinging Redout 2 towards the realism of a Gran Turismo, just one where the vehicles float. There’s 12 base chassis, and you can then unlock and upgrade all of the main components of the ship, as well as a huge number of visual unlocks and different colour schemes. Each player’s configuration can be seen at the results screen, and you can choose to save pro players’ loadout and try their build. This is, in part, an effort to streamline the meta, particularly with millions of configurations available.

You unlock all this via the Career mode, which is divided into 250 events across 10 locations, most of which have three tracks and a boss track. There’s 36 tracks in total, with the addition of reverse modes making for 72 different arenas of speed. Arcade Mode meanwhile lets you jump straight into the action, and allows you to go ridiculously fast right from the start with a top-of-the-line craft ready and waiting.

Redout 2 No Weapons

Multiplayer will unlock as soon as you’ve finished the tutorial, and you can jump straight into a lobby. Both ranked and unranked options are going to be there, with ranked coming a few weeks after launch. Valerio told us, “Fresh challenges will be coming; we have an insanely passionate community so we want them to have plenty to do. Updates will be as often as possible – maybe not every week! – but as much as we can.”

He continued, “We want to give everyone the tools to put together events and customise matchmaking. We don’t want people to sit still in a lobby, so we’re letting people play Arcade or Career while they’re waiting for other racers to drop in.” It’s clear that the team are really trying to satisfy their ardent community, while looking to bring in a raft of new players to the Redout universe as well.

Anyone that has played the original knows how important the soundtrack was to the experience, and Redout 2 already sounds like it’s going to repeat the feat. Bringing in artists like Giorgio Moroder, Zardonic and Dance with the Dead, our preview gave us a thumping taste of atmospheric electronica. Further dynamic changes reflect the on-track action, so you have moments such as the music amping up on the final lap of each race, raising the adrenaline levels and cranking the atmosphere to incredible levels at the perfect time. It’s brilliant, heart-thumping stuff.

Redout 2 is set to launch later this year for PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Time Stamp:

More from TheSixthAxis