etro City Rampage DX is a retro GTA inspired arcade game. The map is small and tight and mostly comprises of roaming around in a car running people and cars down for money, or pulling out a Worms level of weapons to destroy any pursuers. The combat itself is nothing to write home about but the missions themselves have a great deal of variety and do a good job of breaking this up. There is an insane amount of references her to both retro games and pop culture alike. Frogger, Mega Man, Bionic Commando and Mario down to having the exact pixel animated Mario jump. There are entire levels based on this such as escaping prison by using a cardboard box ala MGS; sewers that have ladders and pipes, areas reminiscent of Contra or Pokémon. In terms of pop culture I noticed Doctor Who, Dark Knight, Back to the Future, TMNT and many more. One villain is easily based on Dark Knights Joker as the prince of crime and another is Dr Wiley from Mega Man. Your ally is Doc Brown and you spend a great deal of your missions helping him repair the DeLorean with various McGuffins you scavenge during missions. The final mission is very cool. You assault a castle, take down a private military, fight Dr Wiley in a Mario style mission, then escape as the evil castle crumbles around you in a green van, running down turtles in a sewer. The view then switches to a 3rd person POV with 2D sprites, reminiscent of Mario Kart as you speed your bike down the high way to catch the DeLorean. Once you do you and Doc take down the big bad Wiley as he fires rockets and many other obstacles at you. The final boss is true to form for the series, running people down in your rampage. The game overall is pure retro, the graphics, 8-bit music and voiceless dialogue with "chirps" and "beeps" to simulate dialogue. There are some really standout missions and side missions. One mission has you steal recording tapes of a corrupt publisher that show them saying "employee indies for nothing, then when they complain say they don't understand the industry" or "charge players x10 what they are currently". You give this to a journalist who thanks you. Only to see them report "Publisher donates millions...".
A flurry of clever jabs at the AAA games industry. Or the Ice Tea mission which apes the infamous Hot Coffee mod in San Andreas. After a one night stand with a lovely lady you find she's pregnant, our degenerate career crime wants to get tested and instead he's thrown in prison and must escape. Combing back for the final time has her get a bunch of muscly guys to try drag you somewhere. There are also several arcade games you can play, mean of which are knock off version of games also inspired by the arcade error like 8-bit runner, Minecraft, Super Meatboy, and even the YouTube channel Epic Meal Team gets a reference (someone on the team must be a huge fan). The levels of meta on display here are awesome. Last but not least is the garbage mission. One of my examples of what makes GTA V so boring is a mission where you Franklin covers for his deadbeat friend, at the request of his partner, and does his day-job; literally driving around and picking up garbage. Here you do the same thing but instead you're "taking out the trash" by throwing people into a garbage truck. And it takes less than 5 minutes. I always preferred my GTA games arcade which is why I've never truly like one since IV; but Retro City Rampage captures that spirit perfectly and I enjoyed almost every moment of it.
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