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Title Redzone
Game Type Driving
Company Psygnosis
Players 1
Compatibility Up to 68030
HD Installable No
Submission Angus Manwaring Profiled Reviewer

Review
Redzone is 3D motorcycle racing game offering practice, single track and
full season racing.

The game was programmed by Dan Gallagher, something of a veteran in the
world of Amiga 3D, having written Voyager and Infestation. This makes it
surprising that the game is a bit of a disappointment. Without beating
about the bush - its the frame update. It really is rather slow. The actual
3D polygon environment is particuarly nice, offering a bright and
colourful full-screen experience, but when you consider that the game was
released in the summer of 1992, more than a year after the comparable but
faster Team Suzuki, and not too many people were using anything other than
the good old 68000 processor back then, it does seem rather an odd decison
releasing a game that is sadly lacking in zip even on a 68030 processor.
It is possibly because the program only uses the Amiga's Chip memory,
which would explain the lack of performance, either way, the lack of speed
is hard to justify.

Okay, so apart from a poor framerate, what's on offer? Well, there are
certainly plenty of options. You have sliding scales to control both the
mouse sensitivity and the skill of the other riders, as well as a wealth
of boxes to tick (or not) adjusting various aspects of the 3D complexity.
The framerate can be improved by tweaking the 3D detail, but its still not
fast enough, and what initially looked really rather special ends up
looking plain and uninspiring. In fairness I should say that Redzone has a
very nice appearance; bold, bright colours that look like they are from an
arcade game. The engine sound is also very nice, but what I especially
liked was the dipping and rising of the bike when you brake and throttle
up, respectively. A very nice touch.

Redzone is a game crying out to be patched by one of the skilful
WHDLoad/JST guys. Hopefully steps could be taken to let the game, which
already looks and sounds great, deliver on that promise and allow the
player to scorch round the tracks with an unbridled framerate. I hope so.