Rampage World Tour
a game by | Game Refuge Inc., and Midway |
Genre: | Action |
Platforms: | Nintendo 64, GameBoy Color, Playstation |
Editor Rating: | 7.2/10, based on 9 reviews |
User Rating: | 8.0/10 - 7 votes |
Rate this game: | |
See also: | Arcade Games, Beat 'em-Up, Rampage Game Series |
When Rampage first appeared in the arcades way back in the mists of time, it was an unusual idea. The gameplay involved controlling a massive mutant creature and rampaging through various cities, destroying the buildings, trampling the armed forces I and eating little old ladies. It must I have been a bit of a gamble at the time, when shoot-'em-ups were the most popular games, but someone had obviously noted kids' propensity for violent destruction and, sure enough, everyone took to the game like King Kong to the Empire State Building.
Rampage soon made the transition to the home computer market, with versions being released on both the Sinclair Spectrum and the Commodore 64, amongst others. Even on these machines, with their limited capabilities and primitive graphics, this destructive demolition game met with great success. There was just something so satisfying about finally toppling the buildings and eating that last annoying sniper.
Now, after what must seem like an interminable wait, Rampage is back, revamped, reworked and ready to rock!
Devastatingly Good?
Rampage World Tour is the N64 take on the original coin-op. Basically the storyline behind the game runs as follows. You and two friends have been affected by chemicals from a massive chemical company called Scum Labs and mutated into huge monstrous creatures - a giant gorilla, a huge werewolf and a massive lizard.
You're a little bit miffed about this, as you would be - imagine how difficult it must be to find shoes when your feet are the size of cars - and so you and your gargantuan pals set out to sort out Scum Labs by trashing their complexes around the world, causing as much chaos and damage as you can along the way.
Which is basically where the game starts. You're introduced to the game by a panicky news reporter with a story of huge beasts rampaging through a city. Then your characters appear, grin at you, descend to street level, and it's time for the devastation to begin!
The characters in Rampage have three basic moves: a kick, a punch and a jump. You start the game standing in the street in front of some buildings, with a few people screaming and maybe the odd car or policeman. To begin your reign of terror, you need to climb onto a building and this is accomplished by moving to the side of it and pressing up. Once hanging on the building, you can kick or punch it to slowly destroy it. Punching is slower than kicking, but can reveal bonus items or people, who can then be grabbed and eaten. Kicking the building will devastate the place faster, but you pick up fewer bonuses this way.
For the fastest rate of destruction, you need to climb onto the roof of the building and pound it repeatedly with your fist, sending shockwaves down through the entire structure. Some buildings will also have bouncy roofs, which you can jump upon to squash the building in record time.
Each structure can take a certain amount of damage before it collapses, at which time you need to jump off, or get brought down with it, losing energy in the process.
To begin with, the opposition to your destructive rampage is fairly sparse - just a few people with guns and maybe the odd helicopter. As you progress from town to town and country to country, your opponents increase in number and strength, and you'll run into all manner of armed enemies, from jet fighters to little ED-209 style battle robots.
Hidden Dangers
Apart from the direct opposition, your creatures are going to encounter other hazards. Neon signs for example, will electrocute you if you punch them when they're on. Some stages have large areas of water which swallow you and can make it difficult to get onto buildings, and in addition to the bonuses you can uncover within buildings, you'll also find a number of rather less tasty objects that have detrimental effects if you grab for them.
I have to admit that I haven't played Rampage in the arcade all that much, but it does appear that this is a fairly faithful conversion, reproducing the graphics and the gameplay extremely well. The action is fast and furious, with a lot of humorous animation sequences when certain things happen - if you inadvertently punch another monster, for example, they jump on each other and have a brief fight, complete with a cartoon-style cloud of dust.
There are, however, a few niggles. One of these is the problem that you can't hold onto one building and strike another. I'm not sure whether this was in the arcade version, but on home computer versions you certainly used to be able to lean out and destroy a building whilst hanging onto another one. In this version, you have to physically climb onto every building.
And the buildings themselves seem just too weak. Without meaning to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, I can remember playing the Spectrum version, in which to destroy a building you'd have to strategically hammer it at certain key points until it fell. In the N64 version, you pretty much hit the building anywhere you like, and the whole place just comes crashing down. Whilst this does actually speed things up, it also makes everything a lot easier, and this is the other real problem with Rampage - there's no real challenge to it. The game gives you infinite credits, so when you die you can just keep coming back. This, combined with the ease with which the buildings fall, means that there's no particular skill required to complete the game - you just keep hammering things and then restarting when you get killed. There's no incentive to preserve energy, or search for food, because you can just start anew if you die.
This basically means that you will eventually find yourself going from level to level while everyting starts to get... well, 'bland'. Even the variety of enemies, the various locations around the world and the different ability power-ups you find don't really serve to postpone the boredom for long.
It's Not Bad Though...
Don't get me wrong, Rampage is fun to play, particularly if you get together with two friends for a destruction derby. However, there's little on the N64 version to really distinguish it as an N64 game. Graphically, aside from a few little between-level clips, the game is practically identical to the PlayStation version, which is not to say that it's bad, but if you were hoping for N64-driven 3D graphics -forget it!
All in all, Rampage World Tour is still an entertaining game, it's just a little disappointing. Fans of the arcade machine will doubtless love it, but as for anyone else, particularly anyone who ever had a home computer version, it'd be best to try before you buy. After the first 15 minutes or so, you'll have a fairly good idea of what it's like.
Download Rampage World Tour
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
System requirements:
- PC compatible
- Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP
Game Reviews
Look out, King of the Monsters! Rampage, the bash-and-smash title of yesteryear, gets a complete graphics facelift with this new version of the arcade classic.
Revamped Rampage
Dubbed Rampage World Tour, the game allows you to pick from one of three former scientists who have mutated into gigantic monsters (see "The Terrible Trio"). Each monster is loaded with special abilities and attacks, like the groin attack, and can also perform secret moves.
The object is simple: Wreck cities and score big points before the air force shows up. If you're low on health, you can eat civilians for an energy boost. Just watch what you munch because some items make you sick!
Wreckin' Time!
The titanic beasts face 130 levels that each take place in a major international city. There are also several hidden areas, including Area 69 and Hades, to trash for extra points. Not enough for your monster chops? Then find the four bonus levels where players are pitted against each other in a battle to the death!
Can the world survive? Can Rampage survive the test of time and be a hit again? Do you have enough quarters? Find out when Midway unleashes the World Tour this spring.
Expect monster fun when Rampage World Tour, the smashing arcade title, debuts on the PlayStation. Up to three players can simultaneously wreak havoc on near-defenseless major cities around the globe with any of three beasts modeled after Godzilla, King Kong, and a werewolf. The fast-paced and often humorous gameplay is easy to learn, but it takes some practice to conquer cities. At this point of development, this conversion seems to ensure a faithful replication of the arcade experience.
The days of retro gaming are in full swing, meaning that it was only a matter of time until Rampage finally got its chance to live again on 32-Bit systems.
Rampage is a classic in which you become the evil monster that eats the good guys and destroys their cities. Three creatures participate in the carnage: George, a gorilla; Lizzie, a Godzilla wanna-be; and Ralph, a giant wolf.
Rampage: World Tour starts in Peoria and spans the globe in the monsters' quest to destroy 16 research facilities whose experiments have created them. The purpose of the more than 140 levels is about the same: Destroy as much as you can, as fast as you can. Using a variety of jumps, kicks, punches and secret moves, you're able to level whole blocks, while evading the well-armed police forces and military. They'll try to stop you with flame thrower-toting soldiers, helicopters, tanks and even rival creatures. Any of these threats can be neutralized with some brute muscle, and some make a tasty treat.
Three players can play at the same time, making for some incredible carnage. At the end of each level, destruction totals are tallied, providing a definitive answer as to who was the most destructive. Coincidentally, we will soon provide the definitive answer on whether this game is worth it or not.
- MANUFACTURER - Midway
- THEME - ACTION
- NUMBER OF PLAYERS - 1 or 2
People say:
7.0When I selected this game to review, Dan Hsu said he didn't understand what the appeal of this game was. After thinking about it, I replied, "You get to be the bad guy." Now, whether or not that's a psychotic condition of mine or not isn't important, but it holds true for many of us. Rampage is a good deal of fun, and most of it comes from the fact that you're the monster, and you've got a bunch of innocent cities to wreck. The PlayStation port of this game is just about arcade perfect, and for those who haven't played the arcade, World Tour is quite an improvement over the original. Within each city there are plenty of things you can do, including finding power-ups, bonuses and country symbols that will alter your path of destruction. There's an incredible amount of levels and secret levels, each reflecting the location they re-create in one way or another (sometimes humorously). The problem with Rampage: World Tour is that you probably won't want to play through all of them. The game Is very entertaining for a few hours, but after the novelty of being a baddie has worn off, and your sick of seeing another skyscraper blowing up its redundancy makes the game sour. Thankfully. World Tour does allow for up to three players simultaneously, which breathes some needed life into it. It's a good game, but too repetitive.
8.0I love bash and crash! Although I still don't care for the default control configuration, once you get the hang of it though, it's all you can eat Why are these monsters on World Tour? Who caresl lust smash buildings and keep on clobbering everything in sight. The art style is strictly mid-'8os Midway, and won't appeal to everyone, but the game is fun to play and easy enough to enjoy for minutes or hours. Don't forget the hard-hat!
8.5There's nothing like sitting down and playing a good old-time game. It's even better to do it when It has been enhanced, but still has the same feel as the original. Rampage is a lot of fun. The graphics as sprites work, and it has a lot of little extras like being able to go around the world and becoming other "mutated" monsters. On a side note. I bet that scientist lady would be pretty hot if she would just get rid of those dorky glasses.
7.5So many good games this month, and why should Rampage: World Tour be any different? loved the arcade version, and this translation does a good job remaining faithful to the series. I ran into a couple of gameplay Issues, like the overabundance of flying war machines. I spent more time eating than destroying the buildings, and I still lost health on each level too rapidly to have fun. Still, Rampage is destruction at its best!
If you're a huge fan of the original Rampage, you'll certainly want this nostalgic building-basher on your shelf. If you've never played Rampage before, curiosity and the price of a rental is all you'll need. Everyone else will be instantly bored by the repetitive gameplay.
Playing as one of three monsters, it's your job to eradicate edifices by punching and stomping on buildings throughout several U.S. cities (with bonus international cities thrown in for good measure). And while this is going on, you'll have to deal with angry citizens, police, and armed forces as they try to tear you apart piece by piece. If you play against a friend, you'll even have a chance to beat each other up.
The structures lack variety, but you probably won't spend a lot of time admiring the buildings you're destroying. The music is only mediocre, and the control is a no-brainer--much like the gameplay.
In the end, Rampage World Tour roars loudly, but it ultimately whimpers away when stacked against other N64 titles.
ProTips:
- When flying into the bonus rounds, press Up at the end to access hidden stages.
- When you come across barrels of toxic waste, grab them. They turn you into the winged demon Vern, who can destroy some buildings in just three hits.
- Always try to eat the pesky gunners on the ground or the guys tossing dynamite from the windows first.
- The tanks are the hardest vehicles to destroy because their shots hurl you across the screen. It's best to attack them when their turret is pointed in the opposite direction.
- You don't have to completely destroy a building in order to move on to the next one. When you see a structure self-destruct, jump off it to save a few precious seconds.
Graphics
Cartoony and a little too colorful, the game's graphics strength relies heavily on its comic background touches (people in phone booths, nuns and priests on the sidewalk, and so on). Although each city's major landmarks are present, the game's look is still Dullsville.
Control
There's not much to do besides punch, kick, and jump. Annoying problems like jumping on a building only to fall into water will vex you a little, but everything else control-wise is rock solid.
Sound
Human screeches and 3.5 explosions are everywhere, but where are the subtle nuances like sirens, machine-gun fire, and farting? Plus, the standard rock music delivers the same riff continuously.
Fun Factor
It's mindless, it's simple, but damn it, it's fun...for the first 20 minutes. When you realize that you're basically destroying the same buildings over and over again, you may opt to calm down from your Rampage and read a good book.
Most gamers can remember back to the days of the original NES when Rampage first came out for that system. After slaving away at all 50 states, all you got was a "Congratulations." The game may have been fun, but it left you feeling kind of empty inside. Thankfully, Rampage has come a long way since then, and the Nintendo 64 version from Midway proves this.
Even though this version of Rampage: World Tour resembles its arcade father and PlayStation cousin, it has plenty of features that set it apart from both of them. The added Three-player Mode is arguably the best feature of the cart, and the selectable palettes for each character and other N64-style graphic effects certainly don't hurt it either. What's more is that the game supports the Rumble Pak. Now when you knock over buildings and swat down attack choppers, you can feel it in the palm of your monster hand.
The three main beastly stars of the game (Lizzy, Ralph and George) are back to demolish as much as they can in 131 cities. Since you're going on a "World Tour," you'll find your monsters taking trips to exotic places in Europe and Asia, among others. Wherever you may go though, what remains at this game's core is that it's a fun smash-'em-up that should give gamers many hours of play.
- MANUFACTURER - Sapphire
- THEME - ACTION
- NUMBER OF PLAYERS - 1-3
Arcade conversion where giant monsters trash buildings and eat people. Sounds fun, but is repetitive and mind-numbing.
This conversion of the age-old arcade classic is fun and brings back fond memories. But. ultimately, it's an expensive and limited outing.