Redout: Space Assault Review

Redout: Space Assault takes place during the 2395 Colonization of Mars where players, as Leon Barret, ace fighter pilot of the Poseidon Security Forces. Our protagonist is on a mission to eradicate rebels and space pirates, facilitate our scientists’ research while keeping them safe, and protect all our personnel from numerous external threats.

Redout: Space Assault is a semi-on-rail arcade space shooter where players will need to bop and weave and shoot in order to complete each area of the game’s nine levels. Your ship has a manual standard machine gun-like attack and you also have missiles at your disposal. When using the manual attack, once you have an enemy is sight, the game will auto-target the enemy. While the rockets required players to hold down RT for the missile to target enemies and will be unleashed after a few seconds.

Throughout your mission, you’ll obtain Tokens that act as the game’s currency. The currency can be used in between areas to upgrade different aspects of your ship: hull, shield, missiles, and weapon. As you upgrade, each next upgrade will be slightly more expensive. Although, if you die on a mission, you’ll lose acquired tokens up to your explosion. To earn extra Tokens, you can complete additional secondary objectives during each area such as don’t suffer hull damage, don’t get hit by missiles, or finishing the area under a certain amount of time; just to name a few.

After each area, you’ll be rewarded with upgrade cards as well. You’ll need to choose among three cards that will be equipped and give you additional perks; such as additional missile firepower, improved hull, etc… Once you’ve selected a card, the other two will be converted into Tokens.

The game suffers from a few nuisances, however. The first is that rockets feel absolutely useless as they barely do damage. Even lower, weaker enemies will survive a barrage of rockets. Also while the manual attack offers a small window for auto-targeting, if you move, the auto-target will be “disabled” from that enemy and move on to the next one in your line of sight. This can make combat unnecessarily frustrating and even useless at times given that sometimes there are so many enemies on screen, you’re always moving to dodge enemy projectile, meaning the targeting system will change target every few seconds. Also, there isn’t any visible health bar so it’s a bit annoying. Also, less straightforward missing does not have objective markers meaning you can fail certain missions without understanding why.

The game looks great as a whole. The environments are highly detailed and highly colorful on a darker backdrop making the colors stand out even more. You also get a decent sense of speed when picking up boosts as well. Although boosting and moving around quickly can feel a bit nauseating. The soundtrack is a great and upbeat dance/electronic score that will get your blood pumping during intense firefights. The voiceovers are fine, nothing special, but I’ve definitely heard worse.

Redout: Space Assault is a very fun and addictive space shooter. It’s very simple and basic, yet there’s something that will always make you go “one more area”. Combat is fun, areas are mostly pretty short and be completed in under 5-10 minutes. It’s a great game that can either be enjoyed in short or long bursts. There are a few nuisances, the biggest being some fast flipping around movements that can be a bit nauseating but it never lasts really long. If you’re a fan of action games, shooters or craving some Star Fox-like action, Redout: Space Assault is definitely worth investing some time and your hard-earned money into.