Rampage World Tour
Nintendo 64
Nostalgia Factor:
I have a lot of fun memories of going to the skating rink with my family when I was a kid. I wasn’t too fond on the actual skating aspect when we’d go out; I was more interested in the arcade games. Our local skating rink had Rampage and this is the game I would sink most of my quarters into. It was such a fun and perfect game for a young kid like me, and it was always a real treat when my family members would play alongside me.
I never played any of the Rampage home ports, and seeing as how the series kind of fizzled out I never gave it much thought going forward - until 1998, the year Rampage World Tour came out for the Nintendo 64. When I went to Blockbuster Video and saw this game sitting on the shelf for rental, I knew I had to check it out. I had loved the original Rampage so much as a kid, and I was beyond thrilled that it had been revived for the “next generation” of gaming.
I rented it, beat it, and I’d say I enjoyed my time with it. I realized it was quite shallow and repetitive, however, and after returning the game to Blockbuster it dropped out of my mind pretty much immediately.
I’d get the opportunity to play the game again in the year 2021, a whopping twenty three years after its initial release. How would it hold up after all this time? Ehh…… it’s best if you just read the review to get the full scope of things.
Story:
You have a choice of three playable characters: George the gorilla, Lizzie the lizard, and Ralph the wolf. Each of these characters are massive, their genes mutated by laboratory testing. As you play, your goal is to travel from city to city, destroying all of the “Scumlabs” facilities around the world in a murderous quest for revenge.
Gameplay:
This title’s gameplay is very simplistic. Aside from the joystick you really only use two buttons – one for jumping and one for smashing. The game is comprised of over 100 short levels. Your goal in each of these levels is to destroy every building in sight. Do so and you move on to the next level. And the next. And the next.
You start in the USA. Most of the Scumlabs facilities you have to destroy are located around the world. To help you make it through the game faster it is advised that you look for world flags when knocking windows out of buildings. Eating that flag will take you to its respective country when the next level begins. You play through a few stages in that foreign country, the last one being a city with the Scumlabs building in it. Destroy the lab and you return to the US where you have to look for the next world flag (and by extension the next Scumlabs facility).
You can destroy buildings in a myriad of ways. You can climb up each building and punch out their windows one by one. You can stand on the top of each building and punch downward. Buildings that are low to the ground you can bounce up and down on like a trampoline. As you try to destroy these buildings you’ll have to deal with small nuisances like police officers firing bullets at you or helicopters trying to shoot you out of the sky. I always found the most annoying enemy type to be the tanks that knock you down when they hit you with one of their shells. Oftentimes they’ll fire and hit you again just as you are standing up, before you can even move or do anything to defend yourself. And they will do it over and over again. It’s so annoying!
There are items to be found everywhere in this game. Most of them are attained by knocking out windows in buildings. Items like food will fill up a little bit of your health bar. Other items will give you special powers, like super strength. Some items will hurt you, however. I never understood the rhyme or reason of what items help and which ones hurt you. Like, it’s okay to eat this washer and dryer set but eating a shoe or a paint palette will hurt you? Ok Jan.
This game gets repetitive fast. All you are doing is the same thing over and over again. Scale a building and punch its windows out. Eat items and eat people for spare health. Jump on top of a building and level it to the ground. Jump off the building and move on to the next one, which you also destroy. All you are doing is destroying buildings. So on and so forth. It doesn’t help that there is absolutely no incentive to not take damage or lose lives. There are infinite continues here, so there is no consequence to ignoring enemies and getting killed over and over again. A major irritant is that you can’t change characters when you die. I had picked George with the intent of switching to Lizzie and Ralph at some point to give each character a try. Nope. I was stuck with George the entire game. How disappointing.
As I said before there are over 100 levels in this game. By the fifth or sixth level I was already worn out on this title’s repetitive gameplay and I was absolutely dreading the fact that I had to play through so many more levels to finish the game. But I did it. It was painful but I did it. By the end of the game I was trying to finish each stage as quickly as possible. I’d climb to the top of a building, smash downward, and move on to the next building. I didn’t bother knocking out windows or looking for items (unless I needed a world flag). I didn’t bother fighting enemies. I was just trying to get through this as quickly as possible so I could be done with it.
Graphics:
The game looks pretty good. I know it was criticized when it came out for using 2D sprite graphics and not making the switch to 3D, but I think that it has helped this game to hold up over time. A lot of those old PS1/N64 era games try to do too much with their graphics and make things 3D just for the sake of it, and they end up suffering in the long run. Rampage skillfully avoided that trap.
I like all the bright colors and all the carnage the game is constantly throwing at you. It is like a comic book come to life. Sometimes you just have to stop and check out all of what is happening on the screen at once. I like how so many different cities and countries are represented through the background visuals. Yeah, a lot of cities end up looking “samey” but that was bound to happen in a game with over 100 stages.
I will admit that too many signs and landmarks are repeated in each city. How many “Dan’s Diners” can there possibly be in the world?
Sound:
The game’s music is pretty good. It kind of has this sweeping, heroic feel to it even though technically you are playing as the bad guys who eat innocent people and level entire cities to the ground. The sound effects are good. Lots of smashing and shooting sounds to go around. Nothing about this game’s audio really stands out, but I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do.
Overall:
This is not a game suited for playing on a home console. Rampage is fun when you are playing it in short bursts in an arcade. But as a sit down experience? Meh.
It’s just so absurdly repetitive. You’ve seen four or five levels in this game, you’ve seen them all. Forcing yourself to play through over 100 nearly identical stages just to see the end credits start to roll is a daunting experience. Not because it is difficult (it’s not), but because it is just so tedious and mundane. I had already had my fill of Rampage World Tour before even hitting the tenth stage.
I’m sure this game is more fun with multiple players, but even then I am sure it starts to get boring quick. I’m sure my son would love to play this game with me when he is old enough. But can we sit there and play through the whole thing from beginning to end, 100 stages and all? No. Absolutely not.
I can recommend this game because I like the idea of it. But I can only recommend it to people who have kids or people who want to play something mindless and destructive where little skill is required to succeed. For serious gamers though, this game should be avoided. Like I said, I’ll play it in the future if my son wants to play it. But if he doesn’t, I am never picking this game up again.
Final Score:
D
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