Rampage Through Time (PlayStation) review "Imagine controlling a giant mutant. You move carelessly from city to city, destroying buildings, eating people, and kicking over cars. The military and police department are both out to stop you, but you won’t let them stand in your way. You continue to “rampage” from city to city, causing as much chaos and destruction as possible with hopes of someday destroying the whole world. "

Imagine controlling a giant mutant. You move carelessly from city to city, destroying buildings, eating people, and kicking over cars. The military and police department are both out to stop you, but you won’t let them stand in your way. You continue to “rampage” from city to city, causing as much chaos and destruction as possible with hopes of someday destroying the whole world.

The classic arcade game Rampage allowed you to do just that. You would progress from city to city while kicking, stomping, and eating everything in your path. Years later Midway, the game’s developer decided to revive the classic. With the popularity of Grand Theft Auto and Real Time Strategy games, games in which you can cause a lot of destruction, Midway decided to revive the series by bringing an updated version of the classic Rampage back to the arcades, and eventually to the consoles. The idea of causing boundless destruction from city to city was sure to please many gamers, right?

Rampage Through Time (aka Rampage 3) is Midway’s third attempt to revive the original arcade game. Somehow the mutants responsible for the destruction of the world and universe in the first and second installments respectively were able to go back in time and cause more destruction. So it sounds like Rampage all over again, right?

THINK AGAIN!

Rampage 3 isn’t about causing destruction. You still go from place to place, destroying everything in your path, but now every three levels you will be forced to play a mini-game that has nothing to do with destruction at all. These games are nothing more than old arcade games such as pong, asteroids, and breakout with rampage characters. Unfortunately the games don’t look or play much differently.

The quality of the games rivals cell phone games. The game’s graphics are horrible (which I’ll get to later) but the graphics of the mini-games are so bad the SNES would frown upon them. If you happen to loose in one of these mini-games, you will receive a game over. It would be acceptable if the mini-games acted as bonus rounds (as in previous Rampage games). They are inevitable; there is no option to turn them off.

And you think that sounds bad…

The mini-games are actually one of the game’s good points. The core of the gameplay – the destruction part – is absolutely pathetic. It’s so bad the mini-games popping up every three levels is a relief. The control is extremely unresponsive. Sometimes I had to press a button multiple times to pull off a simple move such as a punch or a kick. You are now forced to fight with 2 computer-controlled allies… I mean characters. Instead of trying to help you destroy each area they will chase you down and try to fight you at every given opportunity (when they’re not fighting each other). So instead of assisting you and trying to help you complete each level, they act as another mean of stopping your rampage.

Luckily Midway included a mini-game only mode in which you can play any mini-games that appears in Rampage 3. This is definitely the best aspect of the game, but still not good enough to interest most gamers. There are many multiplayer games out there that are more interesting and engaging than the cell phone games that appear in Rampage 3.

Rampage 3’s graphics and sound are terrible. There are a few backgrounds that repeat throughout the game and the character models are horrible. Every action they perform; whether it is a punch, kick, or jump is done as if they don’t have any limbs in their body. The models only look slightly better than the original Rampage. The game only puts out three voices; a male scream, a female scream, and a monster scream. The music fits each area well but the quality of it is very poor.

Rampage Through Time isn’t just a horrible game. It is atrocious. Midway tried to fix the main problem, the repetitiveness of the first two games by adding mini-games, but that made a bad game even worse. Add to that a poor AI and poor controls and you have an unplayable game. If you happen to come across Rampage Through Time run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

Community review by Halon (November 26, 2008) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.