R.I.P.D.: The Game Review

I'm just trying to imagine what the meeting for R.I.P.D.: The Game, between publishers Atlus and Developers Old School Games, sounded like.

"We need some story"

"How about a two minute cut scene at the beginning to explain the whole movie/game?"

"Great. Gameplay? And remember, the cheaper the better."

"A generic wave based shooter with minimal maps, weapons and game modes?"

"Brilliant! Any more 'off the wall ideas'?"

"Well we were brainstorming co-op, challenges and even a betting system - just to go crazy."

"This, boys, is going to be a winner."

So yes, if you hadn't figured it out already, this game is quite bad. History has proven that even some of the best movies of all time can (and probably will) have a terrible tie-in video game. I'm thinking E.T, or Bad Boys. Just imagine then, what happens when an allegedly terrible film receives a gaming tie-in. Well, that ugly baby in your imagination right now is R.I.P.D.: The Game. This game fails on just about every level; while it does physically work and has a surprising lack of mechanical bugs, it also so happens to be extremely uninspired and painfully dull.

Now I must confess that I've not actually seen the movie, so can't claim first hand that it's terrible. I will however, direct you to the metacritic page, where it has a notably awful score of 25. So it's not a great place to start, to be fair, and Old School Games have proven that they can make semi-decent games with April's God Mode. In reality, R.I.P.D, which stands for Rest In Peace Department by the way, is just a guns and grunts clone of this game. They do seem to have made it a lot worse, however.

The core issue with the game is the pure lack of stuff to actually do. Rather than a simple campaign, the developers have chosen to make it an even simpler horde style co-op game against waves of enemies. While this is usually a fun addition to your typical FPS or 3rd person action shooter, the wave mode is the only element of the entire game. There's a grand total of seven maps to play through, all of which could have been designed by a six year old. Plus a host of weapons, ten to be exact. Although to be fair the banana gun is probably the best thing about the whole game, at least it shows a little charm. But then, it's hard to f**k up a banana gun.

Of course, a cheap co-op game based entirely on a wave system can be fun, there are plenty of games out there that do it well. Unfortunately, R.I.P.D doesn't get the actual gameplay right either. The shooting mechanic is completely unsatisfying, the animation is sub-par and there's little to encourage you to take on the waves of 'deados', as they're known. The betting mechanic, in which you try to beat your partner to certain goals (kills, headshots and the like), is fairly interesting when playing with a friend, but there's no real advantage of winning a bet other than near pointless money. AI, however, is poor; most enemies have a tendency to just swarm around you, or if they're a little smarter then they will stand a few metres back, but won't look for cover or anything that could help them.

There are a few different deado types, like snipers and giants as well as the usual grunts, but these do little to mix up the gameplay which is essentially just run and gun for 10-15 minutes. In an obvious attempt to add something a little different, you can use special powers which are earned by killing the deados. Two of these are mildly amusing, which is impressive considering there's only five in the whole game and unlike the weapons, they can't be upgraded or changed. Even the two different characters you play as have the same abilities, which is just a wasted opportunity for a bit of variety.

The game looks better than it plays, but that's not saying much at all. There is actually a bit of colour in the levels and the character models look serviceable. For such a poor game, I was impressed by the visuals. Gameplay and visual quality are often around the same level. Audio is appropriately bad, with little to no voice acting (bar the intro) and sound effects that could be from a PS1 game. Although the song during the main menu is kind of catchy, so there's that.

All in all, R.I.P.D.: The Game is very bad. The mere thought that anyone would buy this after seeing it in action is sickening. I'm not sure what set of circumstances led to such a poorly crafted game; maybe a lack of funds, or time, or commitment. Whatever the case, I really wish Old School Games hadn't have bothered. I'm going to go delete it from my Steam library now, in case it infects any of my other games.