Somewhere along the lines, you’ve played or heard about a Rampage game. The premise is simple: You’re a big-ass monster who wants to destroy every city in the world by jumping, punching and kicking your way to justice. Midway has picked this idea up once again with the latest installment, Rampage: Total Destruction.
How does it fare? Not so bad, but no so great, either. If you’re a big fan of the series (and there aren’t many of you out there), then you will not be disappointed. They added some new elements to the game, but a twenty second learning curve and the basic premise of the you running around beating shit uphold true.
So, what’s new? The game is partially 3D now. It’s rendered in 3D, and you can walk to the background and foreground; but the camera doesn’t rotate, which would get hectic if you have multiple monsters on the screen. They upped the max number of players to four, for GameCube, at least—if you are getting this on PS2, you’re limited to two players, which is a downgrade from the previous titles, so boo on that. If you have a choice, definitely pick it up for the ‘Cube as I have.
This version has 27 new monsters in addition to your favorite classics, George, Lizzy and Ralph. Six monsters come with the game, but the others must be unlocked by finding them as icons in the city. Each monster has the same four super moves, which must be unlocked individually. You get them by completing side goals in each mission, such as ”hey, go eat five mimes,” or “destroy seven British buses.”
So, you’d think there’d be a lot of replay value with all that stuff to unlock, but the game gets boring after a while, even with playing with multiple people. But I haven’t gotten four people together for a four player melee round, which probably would be pretty sweet. There’s definitely a lack of four player games that aren’t sports titles, so this might be for you.
This game gets bad reviews because it’s simple. But you know what? It’s nice to have a simple game every once in a while that you can play with young and old people, one that doesn’t require you to use stealth, or go through random bullshit just to have your quarterback pass the fucking ball. I just want a game to take out my frustrations with work, school or sex. I just want to smash a bunch of buildings and throw a bunch of cars RARARARARAAAARRRR!
Don’t overplay this game. Don’t make it your main game focus, but play around with it if you’re getting tired of searching for triforce shards or some other excruciating video game task.
This game is moderately fun, but gets old after a short while. It’s not really novel, because it’s been done the same way multiple times in the series, but that’s what makes it a nice sequel. It has great audio and visuals for a budget title. Yeah, the game is a measly twenty bones! The controls are great because they are very simple.
