Either worse or just as good as the retro Rampage games.
As any other Rampage game, you go off on a long journey to destroy the source of the mutations. Is that it? They just leave us like this? Nothing new to do but destroy buildings and eat people? No, Pipeworks has to add some other stuff too. As you travel through the cities and towns of the world, your character gathers points. Those points can be used as High Scores, not for buying upgrades or to unlock specific things, just eye candy. Instead of points buying upgrades, like some other games let you do, simply complete an easy task of finding, lets say, two ice cream cones or four steaks. Complete the task and a black spirally orb will appear in the center of the city. Pick it up and you have your upgrade. There are four upgrades: Charge Punch, Multi-Spin, Jump Smash and the Roar Attack. For that character you were playing as, he or she gets it. Not all 30 of them. Not so much of a big deal, for some they could be useless. To get all 30 of the monsters, play through Campaign Mode and randomly pick the capsules containing them in buildings as you destroy city blocks. You have to use different characters to get different monsters. It’ll be a pain unless you have some kind of guide. There are 7 cities in Campaign Mode (Las Vegas, San Francisco, London, Las Angeles, Chicago, Hong Kong and New York), with an additional 8 to 10 street blocks for each city. For the past Rampage games, you keep going and going through the hundreds of cities until the end. For Total Destruction, you stop after each city to take a break and go back to the Main Menu. This time, you won’t have to pause the game when you’re bored of it, and leave it on overnight to play again the next morning. At the last street block of each city, Dr. Vector has a new fully powered weapon for you. They’re not too exciting to fight since there’s no strategy. Just punch, and kick and repeat. If 1 Player Mode is a bore, try 2 Player on Campaign or try the other modes. In King of the City you and up to 3 other people try to get the highest points for the one city you choose from. King of the World, you compete in all of the cities you want to play in. Lastly is Time Trials where you try to get through a city as fast as possible before time runs out. The gameplay can last forever with multi-player.
When first playing this game, many gamers will think that someone put the button controls together in a matter of minutes. They are confusing to remember which does which. While climbing up a building to break open a window, you’d want to press B for the punch, but could accidently mistaken it for A and completely jump off that building. I would have to say it could anywhere between a half an hour to one or two hours to get used to and remember the controls.
Well we finally have a complete 3D Rampage game! The intro is pretty amazing with the seemingly original cartoonish scenes. The intro/ending sequence and gameplay movements are cool and fast paced in their own way. Besides the quick unhuman body movements, one arm in one position then quickly changes to a different position, everything is great and stylish.
Unlike World Tour and Universal Tour, instead of serious doomsday music, you get some funky tracks that are great for the scenarios. They are short, about a minute each, and loop over and over again. It could get boring to listen to them over and over again, but there are a lot to hear and sample from and got that nice beat I always mention in my reviews .
There’s no point to play the Campaign Mode over again once you have beaten it, unless you have missed some monsters to unlock or you like the repetitiveness of the cities. Good thing for Campaign Mode (same for every Rampage game) you can play with another person and be twice as destructive. There are other modes to choose from also. King of the City/World and Time Trials. Unfortunately you need at least one other player or you’re stuck with a boring repetitive game.
Bonus and Secrets
As soon as you start playing the game, the original arcade Rampage and World Tour are already unlocked for you to play. They are still very fun to play over and over again especially for those who are retro gamers (like me). Even though there are 30 monster to unlock, there are 3 that are somewhat secret. Its total is still 30 though, just those are the hardest to get. You just need to get all stars for each level and unlock all monster to get the 3. One more Secret to mention is the Code Input. Press L and R at the same time at the Main Menu screen and a sub-screen will come up. Put in 6 numbers to get a Secret like invincibility during gameplay or one hit destroys a building. I’ll give you one password: 000000. This disables all cheats you had previously entered.
Closing Remarks
A small disappointment from this game, I’ll have to say. I can only see Rampage fans liking this game. Then again, it’s only twenty dollars for some who’d like to give it a try, or you could just rent it. Base whether or not you might like Rampage: Total Destruction before buying it, and your decision will probably be good.