One problem I have with the games industry these days is that there aren't as many fun yet shitty games. Games today are either bad because they want your money, the plot is whack or they're just plain old boring. No matter how bad a game is, in most cases it's apparent that just enough effort went into it to stop it from being truly horrendous. So when a friend of mine told me he managed to find a copy of one of the worst games known to man I couldn't be more excited to gaze deep into the maws of this monstrosity for myself. I speak of none other than Ride to Hell: Retribution.
A bit of backstory on the game first: It was originally announced as simply Ride to Hell in 2008, developed by Deep Silver Vienna and Eutechnyx, as an open world sandbox about biker gangs in the 1960s. It was cancelled before its initially scheduled release in 2009 and in 2010 Deep Silver Vienna shut down, yet Eutechnyx continued working on the title on their own, leading to many revisions including the open world aspect being dropped. The game was split into three titles meant to launch a franchise: Ride to Hell: Route 666, a racing-focused game for PSN and XBLA, Ride to Hell: Beatdown for mobiles, and finally Ride to Hell: Retribution, the beat 'em up that blessed the world in 2013, whose reception was so bad it caused the former two to be cancelled. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I genuinely wonder how a game that was under development for almost half a decade ended up being such an affront to God on just about every front.
Before experiencing it for myself I had seen no shortage of videos lamenting its horribleness, but even that couldn't prepare me for what was about to ensue. Janky melee combat, sluggish shooting controls, questionable plot, ugly ass graphics, stupid dialogue, legally handicapped A.I, horrendous driving, voice acting where everybody sounds bored, nonsensical design choices and bugs out the ass. This is all bad by even PS2 era standards, let alone a game released in the same year as Bioshock Infinite and Grand Theft Auto V. I could go on forever about everything that makes this game so abominable, but there's one thing in particular I'd like to focus on: the sex scenes.
Dear God, the sex scenes.
The way sex works in the world of Ride to Hell is that you come across a woman arguing with or being harassed by some guy. You beat the shit out of the guy like the good little sociopath you are, then you're "rewarded" with a scene of playable biker goon Jake limply humping the lifeless fuckdoll you just saved, probably with the other guy's lifeless body bleeding out on the floor just out of shot. And they're fully clothed because why would the developers go to the effort of making naked character models? My man Jake is so virile he can penetrate a woman through his jeans while she's wearing a set of overalls.
Once the "sex" scene is gracefully finished, you're dumped into the exact same spot you were before it started and the girl is nowhere to be found. I'm all for porn and fanservice in games, but at the risk of sounding like one of those dreaded SJWs it's actually kinda offensive that this is pretty much the only thing women contribute to the game: literal trophies with no personality, shown off in one of the dumbest displays of masculinity in the history of media while the men are going around throwing each other off motorbikes and into poorly rendered explosions. This isn't some obscure meet n' fuck doujin game on the internet, this was released on major consoles with a full development team behind it that thought it was all fine to release. And this is coming from a shameless weeb that unironically enjoys shit like Gal*Gun and Senran Kagura. There's a lot to choose from, but the sex scenes are by far the most uncomfortable part of the game, to the extent that I think it would've been marginally improved if they didn't exist. Check them out in full below if you dare.
Despite all of this, I can strongly recommend looking into Ride to Hell: Retribution. As I mentioned before, there are plenty of videos documenting its shittiness but there's nothing like trying it for yourself. Start it up, get some friends round, get wasted and you're in for a wild ride (to hell!) as you roast every little detail. It comes as no surprise that people call it the gaming equivalent of The Room, especially when you consider the awkward sex scenes.
Have you played Ride to Hell? Do you think it's as bad as people say? Can you think of a worse sex scene in gaming? Drop your thoughts below as usual!
