Retro City Rampage artwork
This game has been sitting on GoG.com’s “Upcoming” page for quite a while now and provided it wouldn’t blow it over the water it should be .. interesting to say the least. Or that’s at least what I was thinking, but in reality we all know the grim truth about these kind of games. In other words, yeah, the indie bums did it again : a retro styled game with a generous price (15$)
The game menu, in all its hipster glory.
Graphic wise, this whole thing looks really weird. It’s somewhere between a Famicom and a Gameboy without really having the particularities of either. First thing first, the whole game
Game overloaded
being wrapped into some static graphics to make it feel like a Gameboy or arcade game is a really stupid choice. The option menu feels really hipster, offering scanlines (lol) and other stuff to make it look like your favorite emulator. Esthetically wise, the whole game feels like it’s working against itself, some places having a lot of details but due to the weird collor palette it just looks overloaded. The whole thing feels like an excuse for someone’s lack of artistic direction.
If you think the graphics look bad, you should check out the sounds. They’re really bad. Shooting sound effects feel like
They see me rollin’
they’re ripped off from Contra, but the police siren takes the cake. It doesn’t sound just plainly awful, it literally hurts. If I had to guess, all sound effects were ripped from a tech demo cart. Mind you I play plenty of old games and they at least try to offer some verisimilitude. Not this shit. The music offers the game some dignity, it has some sweet chiptunes.
The controls are a sort of a mixed bag. Driving and moving your character feel really good, but I don’t understand why you can’t do melee combat by holding a button and you have to mash. The autolock system is a bit shabby, but surprisingly this actually works in the game’s advantage because shooting doesn’t feel brainless. The cover mechanics feel a bit excessive. Oh, about driving, it feels fine until you feel the need to do U turns or sharp turns. Then you’re supposed to let go of the acceleration and turn at snail speed.
Contra me a river
Now everyone’s favorite part : the in game jokes! And if you thought Borderlands 2 overdid it, you haven’t seen SHIT yet. They’re flying at you from every direction. Do you remember that person that seeked your approval every 5 seconds? This game is that person. Every few seconds you’re playing is like the game asks you “Am I funny yet?” and pulls another reference. I barely played for one hour and I saw references for Mario, Super Meat Boy, Duck Hunt, Bit Trip Runner, Metal Gear Solid, Contra, Jackal, Cuba, Robocop, Mortal Kombat, Bionic Arm, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Smash TV, Dirty Harry and Back to the Future. What developers are missing out is that you need some proper context in order for the joke to have at least a proper delivery. Here are some examples
Hey man what do you think about the party last night?
The cake is a lie!
Even this overabused joke can be resuscitated with new life in it by offering some context :
The Roboarmwithit (A mix of Robocop, Bionic Arm and Deal with it)
Hey man what do you think about the party last night?
Eh, it was so and so, Jenny seemed really happy with it though.
How did she feel about the cake?
The cake was a lie, but at least it was edible!
Smash TV
References evolved from a rather obscure thing for nerds to the laughing cuecard of 2012. A reference isn’t something you toss in for the sake of it, it has to have some subtlety, some context, some sense. This game is nothing but a pretext for a reference slideshow and it probably has something to do with its audience : children who first heard of these things on 9gag and want to be cool.
The dialog is done in rather poor taste and it just serves as an excuse to throw more references.
One hour into this game and I’m not sure if I want to continue. Mad props for the pompadour of the main character though. Game gets bonus points for that.
Final Rating : 9gag/10
