S&S; Indie Review: Retro City Rampage

Title: Retro City Rampage
Format: PSN, PC
Release Date: October 9, 2012
Developer: VBlank Entertainment
Price: $10
ESRB Rating: T
Retro City Rampage is an indie game that really came out of nowhere for me, I hadn't hurt too much about it until the week of its release.  Its turning out to be one of the major sleeper hits this year.
Story, Presentation, and Core Gameplay: In Retro City Rampage, you'll be playing as Player, the quintessential greased up old school criminal.  You play a pivotal part in a super criminal's huge army of grunts and henchman.  The game in itself is a huge parody, it even says that on one of the opening startup screens.  The story makes fun of so many movies and games, some being a little to old for me, but I grasped most of them.  The opening levels parody The Dark Knight and Back to The Future, with a bank heist and a crazy white haired doc racing towards you in a DeLorean modeled car.  Its really impressive that one guy could cram in so many movie and video game references into one game, only the most seasoned will be able to catch each subtle nod.  The game is presented through a pretty impressive 8-bit world.  It looks like you're playing the game on an old arcade machine, with the scoring and weapon panels on each side of the screen.  Your overall score, money, and health all rest above the mayhem on your screen.  Even though the many residents of Theftropolis are pretty small, a genius use of color and design help you be able to tell the cops from the normal residents.  There are a lot of diverse environments as well, suburbans areas and bustling city squares are blended together beautifully.  Even more references are thrown into building signs and billboards spread out across the town, some I even had to look up.  If you want to achieve the maximum amount of nostalgia possible, you can adjust some of the game's filters to make it look like you're playing it on an 80's gaming machine.  The gameplay is centered around tons of missions and open world gameplay.  Stealing cars and shooting anybody in your path is where the fun is at, really causing massive amounts of mayhem in the city.  The game controls well, it'll feel a little weird at first, but ultimately it becomes second nature later on.  The story mode will take you some time, 62 stages is a surprising number for a 50 megabyte game.  The difficulty can fluctuate quite a bit, sometimes being easy, then headache-inducing later on.  One of the only drawbacks about the game.  If you want something different, you can go to Nolan's  Arcade to participate in a number of different challenges.  Or if you just want to screw around, the Free Roam mode allows you cause as much damage as possible.    Final Thoughts: Retro City Rampage was a fun surprise, I had gone in completely blind, and came out extremely pleased from what I got.  There isn't a lot to complain about with this game, its a solid game that has fun written all over it. S&S Rating: 8/10 @whatsPlay