Rampage: World Tour (Nintendo 64) review "There's a commonly held belief that at least ninety percent of the people who have played Rampage don't have the slightest clue what the story of it is. Most don't understand why they are controlling a giant lizard or monkey or werewolf, and few comprehend why on earth they are destroying popular cities and eating poor, innocent, humans. For most of my gaming life, I was one of these people. Blissfully unaware of why I was doing it, I was killing and destroying left and right. Regretless,..."

There's a commonly held belief that at least ninety percent of the people who have played Rampage don't have the slightest clue what the story of it is. Most don't understand why they are controlling a giant lizard or monkey or werewolf, and few comprehend why on earth they are destroying popular cities and eating poor, innocent, humans. For most of my gaming life, I was one of these people. Blissfully unaware of why I was doing it, I was killing and destroying left and right. Regretless, I ate my way through city after city, massacring not only the buildings and citizens of the city, but also militaries that were attempting to defend them. I ripped apart the animated version of the world I myself live in, and I enjoyed every second of it.

But as amusing as this is, it's just not right. It's unethical, and not fair. If I'm going to be devastating this many animated people, I should in the very least understand why I'm doing it. Hell, I never even cared that I didn't know why I was killing and smashing. I might even have a justified reason to be doing all of this. So, to go back in time and learn the intentions of my taboo destruction, I popped in the game that I had neglected to play for quite some time. For the first time in my life, I read the stuff I was supposed to read, and found out why all of this was happening, why I was controlling a giant monkey through cities, and why I was killing all of these seemingly innocent humans.

And once I learned that the monkey I was controlling was actually George, the one-time worker at Scum Labs turned giant imitation King Kong by the toxic materials used at his Labs, I came upon an epiphany that shocked my gamer system. This plot that had been aching at my sides for years now, the one story that I had never read from a game I had loved so much, that final definition to my destruction that had evaded me for so long... I realized that it didn't make the slightest difference. After learning this and playing the game again, I realized that I didn't enjoy it even the tiniest bit more. Knowing that I was actually a small worker that was working under the influence of toxic waste didn't enhance the gaming at all. But it didn't need to.

Perhaps that's the thing that was so shocking to me. I realized that the game's plot didn't make any sense, and it didn't bother me one bit. Hell, I had practically forgotten entirely about the plot I had been so curious about after playing the game for about five minutes. The graphics in the game have a way of putting the player into a trance. Something about the thought of controlling a giant around and bouncing on the tops of short buildings, climbing up to the tops of tall towers smashing out every window along the way, and eating up tiny humans running around the ground is just fun. It doesn't matter how you got there or why you're doing it, you just do it. I never got the instructions from the game to destroy stuff, I never even read the instruction booklet to figure out the controls, I just pressed buttons, realized what I had to do, and got to it.

And perhaps it's this simplistic design that makes it such a great game for everyone. There's nothing complex about it: you press buttons and you punch and eat stuff. And at the end of the level, which resembles some famous city from around the world, the game reports to you the percentage of the city you destroyed. Then you keep going. And new cities with new designs are offered to you to do what you wish with. The game connects with that one part of everyone, no matter how big that part in them is, to destroy. Everyone has that little bit that loves destruction, and the game allows you to take that bit of you and go crazy. The graphics are simple too complex either, but they're clever enough to make it interesting and avoid repetition. Famous buildings like the Sears tower will appear in their respective cities, plus the backgrounds will always change to fit the global perspective.

But despite the game's efforts to avoid too much of a repetitive feel, it's just not possible. With the goal of "destroy" in every level, there's only so much they can do to keep things interesting after a while. Perhaps that's what makes this a better pick-up-now-and-then-and-enjoy-for-a-while game than a sit-down-and-play-for-days game. But playing with friends make things more interesting. You can work together to double or triple the destruction, or compete with eachother to do the most damage. This element of the game makes things more fun for a bit, but it too won't last forever.

But other than the fact that it can get old fairly quickly, this game is definitely a lot of fun while it lasts. It's also more fun when the gamer is in certain moods. It's a great safe way to vent frustration without causing any real destruction, just animated destruction. But to the animated citizens you're eating and stepping on, the damage is quite real. So control your giants and destroy those people, for whatever reason you want.

Community review by iamtheprodigy (July 28, 2007) 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.