Nothing brings a Lizard and a Gorilla together like a little building bashing!
+ Nice, lengthy game
+ Busting out windows and eating people is good fun
MISS
- Lack of enemies
- Cities can seem rather small at times
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Rampage may have you remembering the old Godzilla and King Kong movies from long ago. I don't know if I can honestly say that action games got any better on the NES than Rampage.
In Rampage, you can choose to be one of two hulking beasts - George the Gorilla and Lizzie the Lizard. The object of the game is to destroy all the buildings in a particular town. After a few towns, your building climbing buddies will trash that particular part of the United States, showing you that you have completed that area. Over the course of 127 levels you will bash down buildings, eat poor, defenseless showering women, spit out toilet water and beat the tar out of your friend (providing you play in 2 player mode). Enemies in the form of helicopters, tanks, demolitionists and police will attempt to take you down no matter what the cost. To make your creature move across the city, or climb up and down buildings, you must simply press the corresponding button on the direction pad. The A button controls your punching while the B button is used to jump. Destroying buildings works very well on Rampage as the controllers are highly responsive. Punching police cars and tanks will blow them up with ease. Eating people, however, is one of the best things about the game.
Graphically, Rampage is pretty impressive (it even holds up now, after nearly 20 years). For an early age console the design was rather simplistic, but very well done. The amount of objects onscreen at one time is downright astounding.
In the sound department, Rampage doesn't offer up much besides rehashed tunes every couple stages. The sound effects, however, are done very nicely. Explosions and chopper sounds are almost dead-on from what they're supposed to be... except this is an 8-bit console, so some of the more realistic sounds couldn't really be processed. While you don't actually receive anything worthwhile from completing the game, it's always fun to sit down with a friend and blast through 127 levels all over again. Since I'm nearing the end of this review, I would like to tell a story of my own about this game. I remember back around the age of 8 when me and my parents would visit family in Maryland. My cousin's mom had just bought Rampage for him, so we sat down and tried to play through it. I recall getting very tired by the time we would reach level 60. The both of us would either fall asleep on the floor while playing it, or we'd simply just shut the game off because we figured it was never ending. Last year, I managed to find Rampage at a local pawn shop and decided to pay my cousin a visit. We both decided then that we would finally finish the game. Almost 7 hours after embarking on our mission, we made our way through all 127 of the major cities and completed the game. It was definitely a sit-back and enjoy moment, that's for sure. I don't think I can stress enough that this title would be ideal for any vintage gamer.
SCORECARD: (via www.enterthezombiegod.com)
8 (Concept)
8 (Gameplay)
8.5 (Visuals)
7 (Sound)
9.5 (Value)
8.5 (Tilt)
FINAL SCORE - 8.3