Despite its dated graphics, River Raid remains challenging and addictive even for experienced gamers today
River Raid has no storyline or characters. The player guides a monocolored plane along a river from a top-down perspective, shooting enemies and avoiding obstacles. Smashing into a wall, vehicle, or being shot destroys the plane. The player has the ability to move left or right, speed up or slow down, and fire. In addition to avoiding obstacles such as helicopters, balloons, ships, and the river wall, the player also needs to worry about fuel. As might be expected in real life, running out of fuel causes the player to crash. Unlike real life, there are refueling stations every so often along the river the player need only fly over to refuel. Flying more slowly over the refueling station allows the player to fill the tank, fly too quickly and not much fuel is added.
Due to the large number of tasks the player is beset with fulfilling, gameplay is surgically stressful. It is all too easy to crash when nicking the side of the river is all it takes to lose a plane, particularly when the river itself narrows to but a stream. Combine this with enemy copters and other objects flitting about the river itself, and fuel often becoming dangerously low in certain stretches, and you have an incredibly challenging game.
River Raid offers incredibly difficult but rewarding gameplay with an easily accessible control scheme. Anyone looking for a quick distraction that becomes more addictive the more you practice would be rewarded by finding an aging copy or emulator.