IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME, RETRO CITY RAMPAGE!

So finally, after months of mini-hype and delay,  VBlank Entertainment's send up of everything 1980s, Retro City Rampage, has been released.   If I recall correctly, it was supposed to come out in May, then pushed to June, then July, then just "TBA".   Almost out of nowhere, it was dropped onto the world on Oct 9th.

So how is it?  Does it live up to the hype?  Was it worth the wait?   Eh, kinda.

  
As I posted on my Twitter feed, "Retro City Rampage doesn't fit exactly in references to other games, it's almost completely cobbled together by references to other games". Granted, we kind of knew this from the trailer.  It was the selling point.  But holy crap, they weren't kidding.  If anything, they were playing it down.  From the moment you begin the game, the references start spraying at you like a gatling gun.  Some of them genuinely made me laugh out loud, some were subtle, some were just "HEY LOOK THIS IS A THING YOU REMEMBER!"   

Thing is, though, that's all this game is trying to be, and I guess I'm kind of okay with that.  It doesn't brilliantly skewer video game history with wit and panache, it pretty much kicks it in the shin and gives a Nelson Muntz "HA HA!".   But that's a part of its charm.  I mean come on, your character's name is Player.  It directly quotes popular misspellings and engrish translations from older games.  It forces the tropes in your face and says "I am a trope" without batting an eye.  It's not quality satire, but it is worth a couple of snorts and chuckles.

The gameplay is...standardish.  It's not going to win any awards, but it's serviceable.  It plays almost exactly like an 8-bit version of the original top-down Grand Theft Auto.  The controls are very tight, responsive, and functional.  Driving can be a bit of a pain, but it's not too awful.  Where the game does get a little fun is when you walk into an arcade and see surprisingly in-depth minigames based on popular current games like Bit.Trip Beat and Super Meat Boy.  These are almost as much fun to play as the main game itself!

Visuals are fun.  It genuinely looks like an old arcade game, complete with full border bezel around what looks like a CRT monitor in the center of your screen.  The in-game graphics are bright, colorful, and true to the roots they're clinging to.  For having such small sprites to work with, they really did a good job managing the pixels to give your character a wide variety of customizable styles.  It's one of the few throwback indie games that I can play and sometimes actually forget that I'm NOT playing a game from the mid 80s.

All in all, I'm giving this game a "not bad".  Don't rush out to buy it, but it's worth picking up.  It's fun, it's worth the price tag of $15, but it's probably not going to rock your world.  It will, however, make you chuckle for a bit while you kill a couple of hours.  You'd probably be better off waiting for it to go on sale, especially if you're buying it on Steam.  I can see this one falling into a Humble Indie Bundle sometime in the next year or so.  But if you happen to pay full price, you won't feel ripped off by any stretch.

Y'know, it's kind of hard to write a compelling review about something you're really not that passionate about, one way or another....jussayin.

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