Ah, the infamous Rambo: The Video Game by Teyon and Reef Entertainment. The game is an on-rails shooter based off of the original trilogy of Rambo movies, complete with quick-time events (QTEs) and even music and voice audio from the films. This title is one that is famous just because it is so bad, and we all know it's bad, but given the price drop from $43.99 to $13,99 CAD, plus the 2016 Baker Team update, I couldn't help but give this one a try.
Story-wise, there's not much to say really... you're John Rambo, an incredible Vietnam veteran badace, plowing through enemies with an array of firearms. The game takes the biggest parts of each of the first three movies, and divides them into cutscenes and shooting sequences. Being an on-rails shooter, expect no shortage of gun fire, explosions, and wave after wave of enemies. If you haven't seen the movie, this game does a decent job of filling you in on the nitty gritty of the overall plot, though anything that isn't action oriented has been left to the road side.
When it comes to gameplay, if you're prone to motion sickness then I highly recommend to stay away from this Rambo experience. I'm not one to get motion sickness ever, but in all honesty my eyes are still rocking back and forth from the game at this point, and I only put in about four hours over the course of ten. Rambo has an awful habit of peaking around corners and then turning away, turning back, then looking somewhere else, then moving out of cover constantly; it's understandable that to make the game more "realistic", the character needs to look around for enemies, but the amount that it happens through the course of this game is far too much. It can also be annoying when you're shooting at a group of enemies, and he turns away, turns back, turns away to see some foes fleeing which are too quick for you to hit, then he turns back and turns to run away again.
On the subject of gameplay, if you're planning on trying to play this title with a controller, forget about it... it's awful. This game is one that should only be played with mouse and keyboard, otherwise you'll never hit an enemy... ever. Although I found the WASD QTEs to be extremely harder to nail than if doing QTEs on an Xbox controller. Speaking of QTEs, this is another mechanic that Rambo: The Video Game does all wrong; luckily, only one level is entirely QTE based and 99% of the time it doesn't matter if you nail or fail them, you will continue on without repercussion with the exception of losing precious points.
The graphics are completely horrible, especially for 2014; the year that this game came into existence. The environments aren't overly awful, but when it comes to characters and cutscenes, the textures and modeling are so bad it's downright funny. Almost all of the dialogue audio is ripped directly from the movies, at a very poor quality that sounds like someone put a microphone up to a TV. The inclusion of some songs from the soundtracks is a decent touch, though. This is definitely a B-Grade title if there ever was one. Most of the enemies that you will face off against look exactly the same, with only a very few exceptions thrown into the mix. The store page claims that there are 25 different enemy types, but the only ones that I recall are your average gunner, flamethrower, machine gunner, Army Officer, heavy, police officer, and Marine Corps.
Yes, there are a large quantity of missions to plow through, 16 to be exact, although most of them don't last for longer than 10-15 minutes at best. The entire base game can be completed in 2 hours, while the three new Baker Team missions add an extra hour to the overall play time. There is a small amount of replayability thanks to achievements, if that's your thing, since you will need to complete all of the extra challenges to unlock different weapons and also blast the heads off of a few more enemies to meet the 2000 and 3000 kill quotas. Rambo is heavily score-based, and the higher your score, the more stars that you will unlock per level; if you manage to obtain all three stars per level, you've done great. There's also a leveling system in place, where you can rank up to level 20 if you so desire... but there's not much in the way of rewards for doing so.
There are an alright amount of guns to play around with, but most of them have to be unlocked through specific challenges. Until you've met those challenges, you will get to know the machine gun and AK-47 quite intimately. Another thing on the store page that threw me off was the statement that Rambo has "a range of different arrow-tips for his bow", but I only found that he had a general arrow head, and an explosion tip. The store page also claims something about epic boss battles, but these "boss battles" consist of helicopters only.
So is this the ultimate Rambo experience, as the store page claims? Well, to be honest it's far from it. I'm personally a huge fan of on-rails shooters, it reminds me of the good ol' days from the arcade; sadly, there's a massive lack of them on Steam and games like Rambo only further add stigma to the already dying genre. Even with the free Baker Team update, price drop, and Summer Sale price of $4.19 CAD, Rambo: The Video Game is still a completely sub-par on-rails shooter experience that should be passed up. The gameplay is made boring by repeating enemy models, lack of pre-unlocked weaponry, and bad QTEs that should've just been left out of the game to begin with. If you're looking for a decent on-rails shooter, Blue Estate the Game is probably the best you'll find on Steam at this time.
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