Boss fights are a particular highlight, with attack sequences just complex enough to require good dodging ability.The self-taught game developer Raul Diaz made his love of 1990s point-and-click adventures, cyberpunk, and Mad Max into a game. Attacks are so snappy, and with the tight sprite work and crisp sound design, combos feel unbelievably satisfying to pull off. Combat is quick, responsive, and just feels incredible to work with. You also have the ability to combo your light and heavy attacks with different button presses/orders. You’re given multiple beat-em-up style attacks, including light and heavy attacks, dodges, air attacks, and projectiles. The combat sections are a complete win, in my opinion. Being able to quickly toggle between various locations without having to actually travel there felt much cleaner, and in spite of how appealing the pixel art locations are here, I find myself wishing that approach had been considered. I found myself longing for an investigation style more similar to that of Phoenix Wright. Even when the dialogue is funny and the story is engaging, simply moving around these bigger sections sometimes took me out of the fun I was having. Areas with multiple levels, like the Scrap Rider’s mothership, are aggravating to get around. Rast’s movement speed is quite slow, even when running. Navigating these sections is a bit sluggish. I also would’ve really enjoyed it if there was more to do with the information given, being able to use everything a character had to say to your advantage, rather than just one piece of information. This is undercut somewhat by the fact that there’s no kind of penalty for choosing the wrong dialogue path, even if you make the character mad. There’s something to be said here for the investigative nature, letting players feel like they’re truly solving a mystery. Each non-playable character will only have one or two pieces of information you’ll need maximum. The downside is that a lot of this information ends up being more or less useless. The game employs meta humor in a manner I enjoyed as the setting is a post-apocalyptic future, records of the pop culture we know today are fuzzy at best, and thus the references to them are sort of pieced together and only half correct. There are a multitude of questions to ask each character in order to find out the information you need, and the dialogue in these exchanges is quite funny. You’ll gather information and items by talking to other characters and checking out your surroundings. Investigation consists of moving around various as Rast, a loveably crass character with a passion for heavy drinking and cracking skulls. Scrap Riders rotates between two game modes, investigation and combat. As the underdogs try to come together, they’ll find themselves at odds with both sides of the spectrum as the law and criminal underworld come to oppose them. The Scrap Riders, a gang of motorcycle-riding outlaws, set out across a ruined landscape where America has ceased to exist in order to reclaim something of theirs. Scrap Riders is a grimy and hilarious survival game, deftly balancing interactive investigative segments with action packed beat-em-up gauntlets.

Mad riders game review