Taking a break from the fidelity of beautiful next-gen
graphics to play some Retro City Rampage on my Vita. Its basically Mario
channelled through the original Grand Theft Auto by way of a love
letter to 16-bit gaming. It also contains time machines. Also rocket
launchers.
Bought it earlier this year on the PSN sale
and only sparingly played it until my recent return to handheld gaming.
Essentially its a game made to fit the constraints of the Nintendo
Entertainment System whilst crowbarring in as much outdated pop culture
as a single game can contain without exploding from the sheer awesome.
Yes
pixels straight out of the era of MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, its an
utterly irreverent game that cares not a jot for story. Its a collection
of parodies all falling over each other at once. It should be
disaffecting like all things that reach a critical mass of irony. It
shouldn't really hold my attention but recently it has done so Playing
it on a HDTV I never gave it much time but on the small screen it just
works.
Not sure why that is. Maybe its due to some
primal association I have between handheld consoles and 16-bit games
going to my first experience of handheld gaming. Back when my mind was
in some way forever blown by the arrival of the original Game Boy and it
forever shaped my perception of handheld gaming as something defined by
the games and graphics of that time.
True this game is
doing a better job of channelling those warm fuzzy feelings of
yesteryear on my Vita than it does on the big screen. Self consciously
borrowing everything that worked in games past, it has so far avoided
becoming a mess of a game without an identity of its own. Certainly for a
small-scale project that was basically someones labour of love it works
best as a diversion enjoyed in small bursts of gameplay. Ideal for attention
spans measured in milliseconds, like mine.
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