I admit, upfront, that I am a "mark" for so-called "retro-style" games. Yes, it's comfort in the familiar - this is gaming as I knew it when I loved it best and so forth - but it's also just a stylistic thing: I'm a fan of "handicapped art - i.e. art made under some kind of imposed technical restrictions - and as such I'm fascinated to see the way talented digital artists use the restricted medium of pixels to create visuals or the limited sound-range of "chiptunes" to create musical compositions.
But I'm also willing to admit that the "retro" aesthetic has also become an easy way for lackluster games to pitch themselves as a quick nostalgia fix or, more commonly, a medium awash in overly reference-heavy games that "work" as nostalgia-fixes but don't hold up as games in their own right. "Retro City Rampage," on the other hand, looks to be doing the genre right - mixing up the usual set of go-to visual cues with a solid gameplay hook (pre-III "Grand Theft Auto" with a gonzo aesthetic and an NES gloss) that looks like a lot of real fun even for folks who don't immediately get a laugh out of a Bionic Commando gag:
Monday, 8 October 2012
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