Race-wise, you get traditional races, elimination races, time trials and the like. Renegade keeps the excellent controls and overall gameplay of the series alive, while adding a slew of new modes. However, if it happens early on, it’s exciting to keep going and seeing how you can rebound - there’s nothing quite like the thrill of victory against all odds and Riptide GP: Renegade executes that well. If it’s the end of a race, your best bet is to just restart. Here, being knocked off your craft once will seriously hurt you - so you want to prevent that from happening whenever possible. There isn’t anything in the way of combat on display, but enemies bumping you in mid-flight will send you flying. You’ll be in a race with thunder and lightning blaring, waves crashing, and still have to content with rivals going after you. One of them reminds me of some of the busier F-Zero tracks of all things because of how much is happening at once. Some are a bit simpler, but you will get some crazy tracks that test you. The tracks are plentiful and action-packed with their layout. It’s a high risk/high reward setup, but thrilling when it all works out. Gaining XP enables you to get even crazier tricks - so if you find that you love taking chances, you can just stick to doing big tricks and wind up with things that will fill about half a boost meter with one go. If you want more boost, you’ll have to take chances with mid-air tricks that take more time. You’re unlikely to fall off your craft doing them, but your boost gains will be minimal. Generally speaking, you will have areas to do grind-type tricks - which are few in number and don’t last long, but are low risk. Each trick has its little intricacies to it and the tracks are designs with each trick type in mind. Riptide games have featured tricks, but not a huge plethora of them - now you have an encyclopedia’s worth of watercraft tricks at your disposal. Riptide GP: Renegade has been developed from the ground up with modern hardware in mind and crafting it with controllers in mind has completely shifted the focus of the core game as well. They played better on a native console than a tablet or phone using a gamepad, as playing this kind of game on a TV offers up a better experience, but they didn’t look much better from mobile to console.

PC and console versions existed, but didn’t really take full advantage of the hardware. It dominated mobile charts and gave fans a thrilling on-water racing game anywhere they were, with exceptional controls and easy gamepad support.

Vector Unit rose to prominence with Hydro Thunder Hurricane on the Xbox 360 and later took what they learned on that game to create their own Riptide series.

I hate riptide gp renegade