Get an emulator. Play the original instead. It's cheaper!
Written: Mar 04 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Decent graphics
Cons: Everything else sucks
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| godking's Full Review: Rampage: World Tour for Nintendo 64 |
I'm getting really sick of the "updating" trend currently going on in console gaming. Bringing out "collection" editions of the old 1980s arcade games (six collections from Namco, four from Midway, two from Atari) for the Playstation was reasonable -- if overpriced -- given that not everybody has a PC with an emulator program. But these "new and improved" versions?
Let's recap: Frogger 3D was an abortion of a game. The new Centipede had two new modes of play which stank and a version of the old one which ruined everything good about the original. The ballyhooed rerelease of Asteroids was barely playable. Really, the only "new" revamp of an old 80s arcade game that's been any good (discounting things like Rare's Donkey Kong games, which merely share the same characters) was Sinistar Unleashed and even that wasn't really a home run so much as it was a ground-rule double that bounced off an outfielder's head. Or something like that, anyway.
Now, that brings me to Rampage World Tour. Now, I played the original Rampage. Dear LORD did I play that game to death. One quarter and I'd be occupied for nearly thirty minutes. That was bang for the buck. The graphics were cheesy (hey, it was the Eighties) but they were funny and weren't cluttered. The repetitive gameplay was, as it was in all 80s games, a bonus -- remember that this is when getting the high score was still something to brag about (as opposed to now, when it's largely immaterial -- a trend, for better or worse, that began with Street Fighter II and just steamrolled).
Rampage World Tour, however, does not offer the allure of highest-score. It's a Nintendo game. You buy it, it's free to play after that, who cares if you get the high score? All it means is that you spent hours sequestered in your basement, whereas before it meant you spent hours hanging out in near-juvenile-delinquency with your no-good friends (which was kind of the point, now that I remember it). Socialization has been replaced with obsessive nerd-dom. Who the hell wants to get the high score that way?
This change could be forgiven if Rampage World Tour offered more gameplay than its predecessor. The improvement in this area is negligible. In addition to the standard game -- now changed only in the fact that the game-board wraps around past the confines of the screen -- there is a very stupid riding-jet-planes bonus game. Wheeee. No, I mean that. Wheeee.
If anything, the game is harder than it was before -- more guns and tanks shooting at you and the like -- which is why it wasn't exactly a smash hit in arcades -- whereas a single quarter used to give you half an hour of good gameplay, now your fifty cents (or dollar if your arcade is scummy and self-enriching) gets you maybe three to five minutes. If you're lucky. The gameplay's repetitive nature becomes a hindrance rather than a boon -- it just means you spend more money, whereas before it meant you needed Zen-like skill.
The graphics are nice and purty, as you have probably guessed. Big deal. This game sucks. It's a taint to the memory of the excellent original. If this game were a movie, it would be The Beverly Hillbillies: The Movie and the dumb shmuck playing it would be Jethro.
Note to Midway: If you come out with a chintzy, suck-ass "updated super revamp version" of Gyruss, I will come down to your office with a baseball bat sharpened to a point and start sticking it in painful orifices. Thank you.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
godking
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Member: Christopher Bird
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Reviews written: 84
Trusted by: 49 members
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