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I’m not going to spoil this one, but it’s sure to bring out a least a quick chuckle. |
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! Yet, despite it all, it's a very functional and servicable game. Despite all of the visual puns, non-sequiturs and 8-bit graphics, you can do what you'd expect to do in a modern free-roaming open-world game: run around a massive city, steal vehicles and beat up people. You can of course, also engage in as much wanton destruction as your maniacal, pixellated heart desires (of course, people can drop Mario-esque coins when they die). You can also purchase items and customize your in-game appearance (including hair and clothing), and when your transgressions pile high enough, you can get into pitched battles with the police (and later the National Guard). It all works, and it works surprisingly well. On top of that you can also go to certain areas of the city to engage in arcade challenges, to rack up points and score achievements. The controls behave just about like what you'd expect in a game that's supposed to ape character control in the 1980s; they work, but it's hard to say if the awkardness of vehicle control is a real fault of the game, or just an artifact of the source material it's trying to reference. Despite that, it's actually really fun and quite amusing, too: the arcade challenges are a blast to play, and genuinely challenging. They also add a huge amount of replay value to what is already a game that offers a lot to see, do, and destroy. As if that weren't enough, a recent update has added mod support too. The appeal of RCR ultimately may lie in how long (or how much) you're willing to put up with (or laugh with) the jokes. But there is arguably still an entertaining game to be found among all of the over-the-top tomfoolery. Just don't be surprised if you decide to fire up your old, dusty copies of Abba and Soft Cell while you play it... INSTALLATION AND PERFORMANCE You can purchase the game from all of the major online retailers, including Humble Bundle, which also sells a DRM-free copy. The game also works in Wineskin, however, as with past games that I've covered in this series, I'll be focusing on the GOG.com version and on CrossOver. The game as purchased from GOG runs just fine in CrossOver's built-in Windows application installer. (The default bottle setting of Windows XP works perfectly here.) The GOG installer will also install DirectX 9, which is necessary for the game to properly work (the game will boot to a black screen without it). Due to the decidedly low-res nature of the game, it'll also run well on just about any Intel Mac, including the venerable plastic GMA 950-equipped MacBooks of old.
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