Rambo: The Video Game

Typically movie based games cause me to cringe whenever I see them, but Disney Interactive’s latest game Brave was a pleasant surprise. Games structured off of Disney properties are becoming more and more exciting to play simply because they are providing a much stronger gaming experience than in the past. Brave is a solid title that brings a fun gaming experience for family oriented gamers. Sure, it isn’t a  perfect game by any means, however I must admit that I did have fun playing it.

Rambo: The Video Game is not worthy of high praise. But that doesn't mean it isn't fun...

It would have been nice to report that the underdog turns out to be a unstoppable champion, but that was never realistically on the cards. So instead we get this: a cheesy, silly, mindless romp in which hordes of identical bad guys get turned to sticky red paste under the furious gaze of your twitching gun barrel. It's certainly not a good game, but it is a game with zero irony. It's not being corny and schlocky on purpose, which means that for all its faults Rambo honestly taps into the spirit of 1980s action cinema more deeply than you might expect - not in spite of its rough edges, but beca...

Later entries in the Rambo movie series devolve into typical action movie fare, filled with scenes of Sylvester Stallone unloading machine guns into untold numbers of enemy combatants. Despite this, the original movie carries a clear theme of non-violence. He doesn’t want to hurt the policemen in the town of Hope, Washington, but he’s forced to rely on his military knowledge when they hunt him through the woods. At the end of First Blood, the body count stands at one (an accidental death after Rambo throws a rock at a helicopter). During the First Blood stages of Rambo: The Video Game, I kille...

This game is not good, but it is playable, and the story follows the movies pretty well.

Rambo: The Video Game lacks execution. Underpolished, repetitive, and littered with difficulty spikes, it’s a hard-sell to most gamers and even those who adore the Stallone trilogy. Not only that, it highlights just how out-dated the on-rails genre is even today. Since Time Crisis, Point Blank, and House of the Dead, there have been no real change-ups. That probably explains why most have been relegated to seafront arcades and bowling alleys.

In an industry where fantastic, marketable games are cancelled all too often and publishers are desperate to make up for years of inflation, the most impressive thing about Rambo: The Video Game is that it exists at all. However, that probably has something to do with the fact that it cost about £30 to make. It’s not all bad news, though – it plays like it cost £40.

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I don’t mind on-rails shooters even in the modern era, but there are certain concessions that should be made to ensure that they’re not shallow. The fact that Rambo: The Video Game is being sold for almost full retail price is insulting, not to mention the fact that it feels mostly unfinished and uninspired. If you need a Rambo fix, you’re better off just watching the original trilogy and acting like this never happened.

“Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don’t turn it off!” said John Rambo in First Blood. As far as the videogame is concerned, I’m sorry mate, I just don’t agree.

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