Iteration Nation

RIP Strikes Back is a great example of refinement through iteration; the original RIP captivated my attention for hours and hours a year ago and I'm happy to see the dynamic expanded on and the mechanics oiled and tuned. Having on-foot motion in addition to turret play grealty expands the dynamic from its previous incarnation, allowing for much more diversity in level design and pacing. The leveling system which gave the original its competetive edge has been refined, EXP bonus come in the for of temporary power-ups now (instead of a perk which defined the original's dominant strategy of perking your EXP rate before anything else to shred the end-game) and graphical upgrades accompany the attributes you choose to boost. The addition of bosses, tweaking of key weapons like the Mini-gun (ironically the BIGGEST gun) and genre winks like dual uzi's make this an indie wonder for Halloween and beyond.

The developer's seemed to have overlooked some minor QA issues, like the stochasticism of weapon drops; the first one had a level could only be won with the shotgun, so when you were given a laser rifle you pretty much had to restart, the sequel errs in the opposite direction by typically offering one weapon per level, making the "Favorite Weapon" post-game stat a bit redundant. Adaptivity, giving players different weapons to carve their own style, would add much to the play. The reload mechanic is also problematic, since pushing the button mid-load will reset the timer, which can be fatal in some cases. Since there's no gameplay value to the reload button resetting itself it seems like it should be disable while reloading is occuring.

My second major complaint is the developers had a tremendous opportunity to make a genre-baron (baron-hood is the best you can hope for when the genre's king was made over twenty years ago) by taking advantage of the storytelling opportunity affored them. Halloween, Death and RocknRoll are crucial characters, in the pinky and index fingers made into devil horns sense of the word "crucial", yet their implementation is simply as vessels with two unique perks. I wanted to see parallel stories for each character, with some text of voice, some scripted events, some antagonism to the otherwise faceless and nameless source of adversity, maybe some context for why RocknRoll goes from the desert to the tundra to the air strip, and so on. I personally believe a good story can enchance the experience of most kinds of gameplay, and its a shame to see White Elephant reveling context-less slaughter.