Review : Retro City Rampage for Xbox 360

Who doesn’t love 8-bit games on a 1080p screen? This was one of those impulse purchases I did when I saw the game. One of the first game for which I didn’t download a demo for and  I was not disappointed.

Retro City Rampage is an 8-bit NES styled open-world game for the Xbox available on the Xbox Arcade store (Among other popular platforms), unlike most 8-bit games available nowadays on Xbox like Fez and Megaman. Retro City Rampage draws its 8-bit color from the same 64 color palette exactly same as the NES back in the day, which for me was one of the reasons to do the impulse purchase.

The retro styled soundtrack is perfect for this Open World Game, along with insanely impressive typos, which make it all so much fun. The gameplay is pretty much like GTA, you get in cars, shoot people, complete missions, and try not being caught by the cops.

Retro Game Play

GTA is one of my favourite games, and 8-bit NES like games are my favourite nostalgic addiction. When somebody combines the two, I end up telling everybody to support and buy this title. (Made 8 people buy it so far) and it’s been out only for a few days! There are subtle references made to GTA too, instead of ‘stealing’ a car you can ‘borrow’ it, and instead of getting high on scotch, you can get high even on milk. The retro style things like dead people turning into coins/money makes you laugh every time.

Most open-world games have mini games included to make the actual game feel more life-like. Think about it as a movie, and about how to make movies. And here too, Retro City Rampage doesn’t disappoint. There are mini-games of popular indie titles such as Super Meat Boy and Splosion Man, there are also playable homages to Zelda, Metal Gear and Paperboy. The finest of the games ever made.

Most parody-centric games never catch on; most of them are like that because they are actually not funny. Some of them obviously are, but most of them just try too hard. Retro City Rampage parodies stuff in an awesome way.

For example, most open world games have a “follow the car” mission where there is a status bar on your screen to tell you if you’re too far if you’re too close the car you’re following gets crazy, and you have to redo the whole mission.

Such missions are usually frustrating and boring. Retro City Rampage comes upfront and tells you that it’s time for the “boring follow the car” mission wherein while doing the mission you’re forced to stop a few times for coffee to help you stay awake because it’s a frustrating thing.

There is a joke or a prank coming your way every four to five minutes of game play. Some obviously will not make you laugh, but some, on the other hand, will make you laugh more than you’ve laughed in any game, ever.

By now you know I am a fan. So you should go buy it, ASAP and trust me, you won’t regret it. It’s the perfect game. When you look at the game you know it’s created by a guy who has a passion for what he does, you can see the art in every pixel of the game. However, if that’s not enough reason for you to buy it, you could always download the free demo available first.

Ratings for Retro City Rampage

Pros:

  • An 8-bit GTA like game!
  • Awesome gameplay
  •  Awesome storyline

Cons: None

Rating: 5/5

  • Design: 5/5
  • Features: 5/5
  • Performance: 5/5
  • Usability 5/5
  • Value:  5/5

Download

The full game costs 800 MSP and there is trail version available as well. Download it from here

I do have a Xbox, it's a standard 250GB one, no Kinect (yet) but I've pretty much been a gamer all my life, first started of with a used Nintendo Gameboy went from that to the Gameboy Advanced and finally the first PlayStation, followed by a PlayStation 2. Never found the PlayStation 3 quite interesting, loved the controller of Xbox :)