Riptide GP

[Overdrijf]

One of my favorite games outside of Stunts is Riptide GP: Renegade. It pushes a lot of the same buttons as Stunts does, but with some different design choices that make the experiences different enough to play both. (It's one of those games where you automatically go full throttle all the time and it doesn't have a track editor, but to make up for it you get to race a rather too literal jetski on dynamic water with opponents and get to mess around with a stunt/boost system.) And it's a lot of fun. In fact I think this is the only game I bought both on the Android store and on Steam, and I pretty much finished everything in the game on both platforms as well.

But this game is part three of a series, and they started as mobile games. With how fast new phones and operating systems come and go both part one and two have been taken off the app store since before I ever tried looking for them. Part two is still available on Steam. It's not as pretty as part 3 because it was ported over as an afterthought rather than designed for both platforms to start with, but it was good enough for me. But part 1 was sadly for me lost to the sands of time. As the developer Vector Unit has since under pressure from the market moved on from making inexpensive but superb racing experiences to mostly producing more typical advertisement and microtransaction supported projects that keep the lights on in todays market but don't quite meet the same quality standards* it saddened me to know that one of their likely best games would remain a mystery to me forever.

Until today, when I found out the first Riptide GP was preserved by at least one file sharing site. I figure that for a game like this, unavailable through any paid means, it's okay to consider the game abandonware-like** and use an option like this, and even to admit it online. So now I've got a new game to play with. My first impression is that the water is even more dynamic in this one. I can see how that could become annoying, but it's a nice variation on the theme. If I put in a lackluster Zakstunts entry for this race you know what happened.

Anyway, now this game series has a topic here. Because a racing game is not officially good until there's a post about it on the Stunts forum.

*Although it looks like they may actually be recovering. Beach Buggy Racing 2 looks a bit "Mario Kart" for my taste, but it I might have to give it a try sometime.

**Of course just after I go online to brag about being a pirate I find out one of the links to a shop on their site does still work. The Amazon App store still sells the game, even if they're one version behind. Looks like I'll be trying to make my "support the developer" donation through there. They also still have the Android version of part 2.

(Update 4 days later: all achievements. I am a boat racing god. Also I had some time left over for the first time in a year and this is what I spent it on. ...There certainly are worse options.)