Rampage: Total Destruction
The good ol’ days of mindless destruction are back – are they still good?
Tags: Rampage: Total Destruction Categories: Game Cube Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jun 6th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rampage: Total Destruction (title page) | 1 - 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Arcade | No | ||
completely mindless.
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One of the classic arcade games that I remember liking right from the start was Rampage. This was back in the days when parents and politicians didn’t think about violence in videogames yet, and that kind of environment bred a naïve air of recklessness and destruction in videogames that took a childlike glee in making things go “boom”. Mario dealt with enemies by squishing them beneath his feet, multitudes of shoot-‘em-ups like Contra had a heroic soldier plowing through wave after wave of enemy troops with no regard for any human life other than his own (and mayyyyyybe player 2). My, those were good, innocent times, and it’s kind of sad that Mortal Kombat forever changed the way those who don’t play videogames looked at the medium. Ah, but I digress – Rampage was noteworthy because it represented everything about that era that thrilled in the art of wreaking as much havoc as possible.
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For those unaware, Rampage placed you in the role of a giant monster tasked with tearing a city to the ground, building by building. It was a wonderful outlet for living out those fantasies of trashing a city as King Kong or Godzilla (or rather, George the ape and Lizzie the lizard, with Ralph the wolf as a third option), and it pulled no punches, either. You would punch into submission any of the military’s tanks or helicopters that stood in your way, and you could eat anything that looked edible, including people, which was always followed by the monster satisfactorily chewing his food. Sure, it wasn’t a particularly deep game, but it was good ol’ mindless arcadey fun.
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Zoom ahead to today, and we’ve received the third title in the series, and generally things are a lot like they were back then. Finally adding a third dimension hasn’t really changed much about how the game works, either, aside from occasionally making the controls a bit awkward, and although there are far more characters now, each with multiple attacks, it’s still all just different ways of doing the same thing – tearing down a city piece by piece.
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The jump to 3D hasn’t exactly been a big leap graphics-wise either. The game is 3D, it has some nice details here and there, but that’s mostly it. It works, although it’s not particularly impressive. At the very least, the details of the parody environments are a nice touch. To give you an idea, the first city you smash through is Las Vegas, where you destroy parodies of the city’s famous casinos one by one. The Excalibur parody has its own moat, the Treasure Island parody has a pirate ship that shoots cannonballs at you, and the various other casinos all have nice touches that make the game’s levels a bit more unique than they’ve been in the past.
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I suppose my main complaint here is, the game still isn’t very deep. As in previous entries in the series, you’re just causing mostly indiscriminate destruction and trying to stay alive while doing it. There’s no real strategy or skill involved here. For those looking for good ol’ arcade-style mayhem, they might be satisfied, but after seeing how fun games like this can be when given a bit more depth, like War of the Monsters on PS2 or Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, this game can’t help but feel like a step backwards.
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Adding a bit of value to this package is the fact that it includes both previous games in the Rampage series as well, and for a slim $20 price tag, smashing up the neighborhood in three complete games is actually a pretty good deal. It’s just hard to feel quite as enthusiastic as I once did as a kid in the arcades now that I’ve seen how much better this type of game can be when it’s not.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Smashing stuff is fun! + Also includes the original Rampage and Rampage: World Tour + It's hard to argue with a $20 price tag |
7.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- The gameplay hasn't evolved much over the years - The controls are occasionally awkward - There's not much depth here - If you really want to smash a city to pieces, there are better games that let you do it |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| For $20, getting this Rampage title with its two predecessors is a pretty good deal, so long as you don't mind the shallow, repetitive gameplay | |
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Tags: Rampage: Total Destruction
Posted by Jake McNeill on Jun 6th, 2006 and is filed under Game Cube Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
