Retro City Rampage DX is designed to be a fun, winking nod to ’80s action movies and games, but I don’t get the sense that said winking is intended to go any deeper than “LOL ’80s!”.īut that’s okay. And while I don’t think I’d phrase it quite so harshly, I wouldn’t not say that, either. Of course, it could be argued that all this non-stop action is just there to distract you from a lack of substance. It’s horribly amoral, but it’s also pretty fun, particularly once you factor in the fact that your vehicles are always significantly more powerful than the cops who will instantly jump out of the cars and start chasing you, guns drawn. In fact, it’s practically encouraged, in a way that would never fly in more realistic (or, at least, more graphically advanced) games like GTA or Saints Row: you get points for the number of pedestrians you can mow down one after another. Even more importantly, though, it’s a well-populated city, which means that not only is there always the possibility of discovering more, there’s also plenty of opportunity to indulge your inner psychopath and drive around like a maniac. Retro City Rampage DX’s city is huge, with all kinds of neat side missions and distinct districts to explore. You wouldn’t think that an 8-bit game could be that expansive, but…well, it is. That said, what really hooked me this time around was everything you could do between missions. That makes it incredibly hard to ever put the game down, and more often than not, this meant that I’d find myself playing for far longer than I’d originally intended. Every mission seems to lead naturally into the next, and it doesn’t hurt in this regard that as soon as you’ve finished one mission, there are literally flashing arrows directing you to your next stop. But beneath all that, it’s actually really addictive.

Yes, it goes heavy on the retro and yes, you can spend a good chunk of it playing “Spot the ’80s reference!”.

Now that it’s back - with that aforementioned “DX” at the end of its name - I’m thinking I may have been a little harsh in my initial assessment. I had it pegged as a game that was more style than substance, that used retro graphics and all kinds of ’80s references as a substitute for being interesting. I played it for about half an hour, chuckled a few times at the referential humor, and then put it off to the side and never played it again. The first time I played Retro City Rampage - two years ago on the Vita, before it had been reissued with a “DX” at the end - I never really got into it.

Retro city rampage dx os4 review