Review: R.I.P.D. The Video Game

Posted by Ben on July 26th, 2013 | 3 Comments | Tags: RIPD

Somehow, a total conversion mod has made it on to PSN. R.I.P.D is a lazy, uninteresting, and downright soulless marketing tool, designed to sucker in those of us unfortunate enough to be interested in its film counterpart. The fact that it bears such a striking resemblance to the developer’s previous game simply serves to add to a feeling I haven’t experienced in a while. Disbelief that a licensed game this bad can still get made.

Old School Games’ God Mode came out on PSN in April of this year. It was an interesting enough co-op shooter where the player faced off against hordes of the undead, while taking on new challenges, seemingly presented at random in order to mix up the action. You gain gold for the successful completion of tasks, and can either upgrade or purchase new weapons at the end of each match.

Now, If I were to belabor the point, I would simply take the above description, change a few key words, and rewrite it below.

I’m going to belabor the point

Old School Games’ R.I.P.D just came out on PSN. It is a downright insulting co-op shooter where the player faces off against hordes ‘Deados’, while taking on new challenges, seemingly presented at random in order to mix up the action. You gain gold for the successful completion of tasks, and can either upgrade or purchase new weapons at the end of each match.

There’s a few small changes there, but nonetheless significant ones. However, even without the seemingly shady recycling used, R.I.P.D is still a pathetically lightweight game, with a positively anemic content set. There’s a handful of levels, a selection of uninteresting guns to unlock, and one of the two main characters from the film to choose from. You’ll get a sort of alright looking Jeff Bridges likeness, and a potato headed nightmare, supposedly meant to resemble Ryan Reynolds. You can tackle the game’s levels solo, but you may get the feeling that they’re not designed to be played by yourself. In fact, I’m almost certain the game was designed to be played with a friend by your side. If you can convince somebody to share the pain with you, at least you can express your displeasure over voice chat.

The gameplay at hand is uninspired, with loose shooting controls, and an aiming system that often makes you feel that if you don’t have the enemy exactly in your sights, you won’t hit them at all. It feels almost comedic that the game starts you out with a shotgun, which may well be the worst weapon I’ve used in the game, due to the difficulty in aiming, combined with the utter lack of hit feedback. Enemies don’t even flinch after a shotgun blast, with your only indicator that you’ve done any damage being when they disappear in to a grimy looking pile of dust.

In fact, grimy may well sum up R.I.P.D’s look perfectly. There’s a waxwork-esque haze to all of the texture work in the game, with the character’s hair stuffing in particular. The frame rate at least holds up, and there’s some motion blur here and there, but the game just looks horrible. This problem is exacerbated by the speed it takes to load textures at, leaving environments looking like bad watercolor versions of themselves. It’s a little nasty. Thankfully there’s some generic rock music to help you forget about how bad the game looks, and focus on how bland it all sounds.

R.I.P.D. The Video Game couldn’t be more true to its title if it tried. It’s a video game based off a movie. Old School Games’ name feels apt in this case. They don’t make games like this very often anymore, but there’s a good reason for that. Because people wised up about buying licensed games when they were full retail titles. Let’s hope they’re still smart enough to do it when they’re $10.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation 3 version of the game.